In pictures: early Victorian photography
An exhibition exploring one of the earliest forms of paper photography – salt prints – opens at Tate Britain this month, with some 90 rare examples on show. Invented by William Henry Fox Talbot in the mid-19th century, the salt print technique involved soaking paper in silver iodide salts to register a negative image that, when photographed again, created permanent paper positives. The works displayed are among the few salt prints that survive.
Cantinière [woman attached to a military regiment], by Roger Fenton, 1855 © Wilson Centre for Photography
Base of the Obelisk, by James Robertson, c1854 © Wilson Centre for Photography
Mother and Son, by Jean-Baptiste Frenet, 1855 © Wilson Centre for Photography
Fruit Seller, by George Kendall Warren, 1860 © Wilson Centre for Photography
The Fruitsellers, by Calvert Jones, 1843 © Wilson Centre for Photography
Elizabeth Rigby, later Lady Eastlake, with Cupid Statuette, by Hill & Adamson, c1845 © Wilson Centre for Photography
Newhaven fishermen, by Hill and Adamson, 1844 © Wilson Centre for Photography
William Morton, One of Dr. Kanes’s Men, by John S. Johnston, c1857 © Wilson Centre for Photography
Salt and Silver: Early Photography 1840–1860 is on show at Tate Britain, London from 25 February–7 June 2015. Find out more at www.tate.org.uk
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