"How charming it would be if it were possible to cause these natural images to imprint themselves durably and remain fixed upon the paper! And why should it not be possible? I asked myself."
Whilst writing yesterday, the thought kept occurring, 50 years ago that photo took place of the three godmothers, aging me somewhat;) Yet it was only 183 years ago that photography happened at Lacock Abbey in Wiltshire. Lacock is a pretty village, often used in film sets of earlier times, visited by many tourists and having at (its almost) centre the great Abbey of Lacock. It was part of my dissertation on the abbeys of Wiltshire, and I loved the countryside round there. Friends excavated there, Jane worked for what is now Historic England, cataloguing stuff. Their great find was a clasp of a bible in the reredorter (the latrine of the monks) making reading on the loo a communal experience.
I have got through a few cameras, remember the old film ones, you took the film to the chemist, they got developed, and you paid for failure! Then there was the polaroid, that faded gently in the albums. Then came the internet and digital cameras and suddenly the whole world could take photographs and could display them at the touch of a button. And it all started with Fox Talbot capturing a window in the Abbey.
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lacock Abbey remodelled into a home for the Sheringtons By Diliff -https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=33017591 |
I often wonder what these inventors from the past would make of it all today.
ReplyDeleteI suspect the word 'gobsmacked' comes to mind. Everything seems to run on invisibility, trailing through the air like the internet.
ReplyDeleteOr how about when you opened up the camera to get the film out discovered it had sprung off the take up roll and there would be no photos at all.
ReplyDeleteThose were the days, trying so hard not to expose the film to light, and the winding on process. Mind you getting photos onto the net wasn't always so easy as well in the beginning.
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