I

.
Figure 1. John MorEll, Sir Dat'id Brcll'sliT emd William HCliry rox
Til/bOl, March 1864. Photograph CourtesY the Scicnce MuseUlll.
London.
Talbot's Natural Magic
Douglas R. Nickel
We might begin with a passage fi'olll Talbot's first public
utterance about his derivation of the process soon to be
named 'photography'. The date is 31 January 1839. the
place is the Royal Society in London, and it is six days
after Michael Faraday had cOllllllunicated to the Royal
Institution that the idea of making pictures >.vith light had
an English as well as a French origin. That evening Talbot
read his paper Some ACCOllllt (!l the Art 0{ Drawil1X,
outlining the history of his involvement with experiments
using nitrate of silver to make images on paper, the
successes and tlilures of prior investigators, and the accuracy
of the process f(x copying flat objects. In due course, in
a section captioned 'On the Art of Fixing a Shadow',
he asserts:
Th
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This remarkable of whatever value it may turn
out in its application to rhe art" will at lea,t be accepted ;1, a
new proof of the value of the inductive methods of Illodern
science, which noticmg the occurrence of unusual circulll
stances (whICh accident tlr,t Illanifests In sOllle slllall
degree), and by with experiment:;, and
varying the condItions the true law of nature
which they express is conducts u, at length
to consequences altogether remote from mual
experience, Jnd contrary to almost universal belief.
In other words, Talbot is proposing that, even if his new
technique turns out to be functionally or artistically useless,
the methodology that led to its discovery nonetheless
illustrates the soundness of one approach to the
way modem science can be practised, namely, the inductive
method.
2
We might call the author of this statement
'the positivist Talbot', for with it he not only the
kind of science with which he wants to be associated
but also an awareness of the philosophical implications of
declaring a method to a field whose unproblematic
designation ill his statement, 'modern science', belie,; the
complex internal political realities of scientific investigation
in Britain in the 1830s. By photography as
not just an invention, but rather as a demonstration of
pure research through a rational, Baconian system, Talbot
aligns himself with our own modern disciplinary attitudes
and philosophical paradigms about how and why science
gets done.}
Consider, however, the passage that immediately
precedes this one in Talbot's paper.
The phenomenon which I have no\\' lllelltioned appears
to me to partake of the character of the 1II001}1'1/"I1S. almost as
much as any fact which physical has yet brought
to our knowledge. The Illost a shadow,
the proverbial emblem of all that is lllOmelltary,
may be fettered by the spells of our 'lIalliral . and lllay
be flxed for ever in the position which it seemed destined
fix a single instant to occupy4
Here we have Talbot, one of the most distinguished
scientists of his day, standing before the leading lights of
the British intellectual establishment and
spells, emblems, and the archaic dreams of to
describe the most important new technology of the nine
teenth century. Talbot submits a variant of this analogy
to the Literary Ga,"2'ette of 2 February when he describes
his process as 'little bit of magic realized: of natural
magic'.5 In a notebook entry for 3 March, Talbot
refers to the making of 'Magic Pictures, with
silver nitrate on salt paper'.6 Five days after Talbot
delivered his paper, his friend and the Scottish
scientist Sir David Brewster (figure 1), writes to ask: 'If
you have any fragment of your sibylline sketches that you
could spare, I wi,h much that you could me a sight
of [your] 'vvonder'.
7
The Englishman evidently complied,
for on 12 February Brewster writes to receipt
of what he terms 'your specimens of the black art'.
8
This manner of reference is not as isolated as one
might think. John Herschel, Talbot's other great scientific
fnend, upon receiving Talbot's account of the calotype
two years later, writes 011 16 March 1841' 'I felt
sure you would perfect yOUT processes till they equalled
or surpassed but this is really
you deal with the naughty one. Das kommt nif/Jt lI1it refhtell
DillJ;en as the Germans say'.'! The Athn/(/eum described
the process to its readers as 'A Wonderful Illustration
of Modern Necromancy' - sorcery, in other words, a
means of communicating with the dead.
1o
In his intro
duction to The Pencil (!f Nature Talbot elaborates upon his
prior musings in Some Account (!f the Art (!l Phoro,l!el1ic
D m l l l i n , ~ , now characterizing the images on the ground
glass of the camera ob5cura as 'fairy pictures, creatiollS of
a moment, and destined as rapidly to fade . 'How
charming it would be', he recalls thinking, 'if it were
possible to cause these natural images to imprint themselves
durably, and remain fixed upon the paper!' .11
The purpose in calling attention to these locutions
is twofold. It should be obvious that when Talbot and
his contemporaries offer up images of fairies, fortune
tellers, spirits, and alchemy, they do 50 poetically, as an
exercise of wit, or as a way of evoking and containing
the very superstitions and defunct belief systems that post
Enlightenment science sought to vanquish. A Freudian
reading of these might suggest that jocular
invocations of witchcraft, and the superlldtural, in
either scientific correspondence or periodicals, betrays some
deep-seated at the heart of the Enlightenment
project regarding the impossibility of banishing altogether
irrationality and mythological explanations from the world.
The goal here is more descriptive, however. It is to ask
what happens when we cake seriously as a category the
otherworldly metaphors and linguistic figures that we find
Talbot and his peers to describe photography at
the moment of its inception not simply because of
their frequency but also because sLlch language encodes
some ofthe Romantic epistemological preconditions upon
which Talbot based his understanding of science and the
nature of reality. If photography was for Talbot a proof
of the value of the inductive method, it \vas also reflective
of a foundational metaphysics not so easily assimilable
into our latter-day picture of Talbot as a positivist. This
is not to say that it is wrong to label Talbot a positivist
if anything it is the obvious to do with him. This
version of him is reductive, and excludes those
parts of his mental landscape that are interesting precisely
because they are foreign to us. When we overcome the
teleological drive to make nineteenth-century culture the
prelude to our own secular, technocratic condition and try
to understand it on its own terms, Victorian England
becomes still more fascinating, remote, and enigmatic.
Another reason to take seriously the rhetorical
manoeuvres of Talbot and those around him is that these
lillf,"ltistic choices had their own cultural consequences. In
his introduction to The Pencil Talbot acknowledges
the shakiness of his bid to be called the inventor of
photography, if photography is considered simply a tech
nique. He admits having read Wedgwood and Davy's
133
Douglas R. l\"ickc/
paper of 1 802 ill the JOllmal tlie Royal 1n51i1lltio11 before
undertaking in earnest his own experiments,
their efforts to be . curious and interesting, and
establish[ ing 1 their claim as the first inventors of the
Photographic Art', but goes on to maintain that 'though my
own labours had been ... directly anticipated by Wed6l\vood,
yet the improvements ,vere so great in all respects, that 1
think the year 1[-139 may [lirly be considered as the real
date of the birth of the Photographic Art, that is to say,
its fir<;t public disclosure to the world'. Notwithstanding
the lct that some might deem publication in the Journal
of tlte Royal instit1ltion public disclosure, what Talbot is
propounding here IS th;lt invention can also consist of
improving a known technique to a stage of readiness for
public acceptance. A philologist who was himself then
preparing a book on etymology, Talbot recognized that
how something was talked about determined the way it
was thought about, a principle we would today describe
as philosophical nominalism. The cultural invention of
photography its invention as an idea rather than a
practice - depended upon its presenters' abilities to frame
its workings in intelligible and effective tenns, to naturalize
its newness and pave the way for its assimilation through
analogy to pre-existing ideas and beliefs. If we compare
Talbot's introduction of his process with that ofWedgwood
and Davy, Talbot's is as rich in figurative allusion as
Wedgwood's is a dry list of chemical operatiolls.
13
In this
respect, \VC should Talbot as a founder of photo
graphic discourse, one of the first writers to invent
photography as a potent idea. Then we must ask what the
discursive regularity of metaphors conjuring of
black magic and the occult might have to do with those
segments of modern science and the public imagination
to which Talbot was appealing. This seemingly irrational
counterdiscourse has enjoyed its share of historiographic
success. One need only recall Roland Barthes's plea in
Camfra Lucida to preserve the illefi"::tble in photography
against positivist explanation and his desire to safeguard
its irrationality (what he calls its to glimpse
how a history of photographic metaphysics may be seen
to begin with Talbot and his circle.14 When we open
ourselves to their centrality to nineteenth-century thought
and in the conceptualization of photography in particular,
spiritual figurations of this sort abound.
Mapping a few of these metaphysical tropes will
illustrate the point. When Talbot refers to photography
as 'a bit of natural magic' , the contemporary reader would
have understood him to be glossing the classical and
medieval doctrines out of which modern science arose,
namely, alchemy and the herrnetic tradition. So-called
'books of secrets', back to Aristotle, were the first
texts to include explanations of nature's behaviour and
experiments for accessing the esoteric knowledge thought
to be locked within her precincts. The production of
such books reached its apogee in the sixteenth century,
the best known example being the 1584 1\,faj.!iae Natumlis
by the Neapolitan Giambattista della Porta. Porta's volume
134
was a bestseller: it went through fIfry editions over the
next century, being translated into Italian, French, German,
Dutch, Spanish, Arabic, and English. IS The twenty books
of Natural Alagic were not systematic. They were typical
of the genre in compiling wisdom from various sources,
ancient and modern, and of various kinds, including recipes
for coloured dyes, the preparation of quenching
waters for iron and steel, healing herbs for
diverse afflictions and antidotes for poisons. Included also
are techniques for the manufacture of artificial gems,
practical alchemical formulas, such as a jeweller or tinsmith
might use, and one of the earliest descriptions of the
camera obscura. Such discussions were not theoretical
they did not ask why particular worked, any more
than a modem cookbook does - bm were 'how-to' guides
to the phenomena of the natural world. Nevertheless,
books such as Porta's manifested a coherent view of
nature. The basic assumption of natural magic was that
nature teemed with hidden forces that could be harnessed,
imitated. improved upon, and used for human gain, that
nature's external appearances cOllceal an underlying reality
that could be tapped at wilL III Porta', hands natural
maf,:ric was white magic. a demonstration of Christian Neo
platonism; his stated goal was to offer rational, naturalistic
explanations of the occult forces of nature, to combat the
bias towards fallacy, ignorance, and mischief among men.
'Let envy be driven away', he writes, 'and a desire to
benefit posterity v,mquish all other thoughts. The most
rnajestic wonders of nature are not to be concealed, that
in them we may admire the mighty powers of God, his
wisdom, his bounty, and therein reverence and adore
him' .16
Natural was not just a philosophy but an
ideology, and in Porta's time it was one that was suggestive
of Reformation politics. In the seventeenth century the
Catholic Church obstructed its dissemination, it
was too close to demonic magic and redolent of pagan
superstition. It was considered heretical in its desire to
make miracles 'natural', 110 exception from the clergy's
effort to protect the faithfiJI from magic of all sorts. At
stake was the Church's jurisdiction over supernatural forces
for, in the popular imagination. magic remedies competed
with clerical ones. As guardian of Scriptural prophecy,
the Church felt threatened also by the way natural
condoned astrological forecasting and divination. Porta
spent his lifetime dodging the Inquisition and charges of
witchcraft, when in [let his philosophy aimed only to
dispel (lise beliefs and ignorance. Voltaire later quarrelled
the Church over this same enthrallment with super
stition and magic; he objected to a Church that did not
denollnce sorcerers as deluded madmen but dealt with
them rather as men \vho really had commerce with the
Devil.
17
Yet the empirical premises upon which natural
magic was demonstrated were often sound, and when this
tradition was combined ,vith Aristotelian natural philosophy,
it became the foundation of modem science.
o
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One might think the theological politics of natural
magic would have been outmoded by Talbot's era, but this
was not the case. As we have noted, one early recipient
of Talbot's photogenic drawings was David Brewster, one
of the pre-eminent scientists of the day. Editor of the
Afagazine and the Edif1blJ(((it P/Jilosopiliral Journal
and Principal of the United College of St Leonard and
St Salvator at St Andrews, Brewster was also a member
of the evangelical wing of the Church of Scotland. In
addition, he was one of Talbot's closest scientific friends.
1R
It was Brewster who introduced photography into
St Andrews, and it was he who brokered the partnership
between Robert Adarnson and David Octavius Hill. Upon
receiving 1m first photographs from Talbot, Brewster
wrote in appreciation of what he called 'your specimens
of the black art'. He deploys this sorcery allusion again in
a letter of 23 February to James David writing
that Talbot's 'specimens of the Black Art have been
paying visits at KinsCmns' Castle ofScone,.19
Brewster's demonic references are especially curious
in light of the fact that in 1832 he himself published a
book entitled Letters 011 l\'atural Magic. This begins: 'The
subject of Natural Magic is olle of great extent, as well
as of deep interest. In its widest range, it embraces the
history of the governments and the superstitions of ancient
times, of the means by which they maintained their
influence over the human mind, from a knowledge of the
powers and phenomena of nature'.20 Brewster's pretext
for writing on natural magic was ultimately political: he
wanted to discredit the occult and show how knowledge
of the natural sciences was used as an instrument of state.
For Brewster such 'spiritual despotism' was associated
with the priestly caste and the Roman Church, and he
used bis book to promote enlightened, democratic support
for the sciences. In Chapters II to Vl he concentrates on
the workings of the eye and how it may be deceived
dlrough internal or external causes; he brands it the 'seat of
the supernatural', because it admits to the mind potentially
illusory External vision is understood as 'the hand
writing of Nature on the retina'. Brewster then compares
the eye to a camera, two metaphors that Talbot himself
",,;ould adopt in the title and text of Tile Pel1dl of l\'aturc
twelve years later. Underlying Brewster's project are his
strong Evangelical faith and his desire to use natural
philosophy in the service of an ecumenical piety. 'Modern
science may be regarded one vast miracle'. he writes:
Whether we view it in relation to the Being by
whom its and laws were formed, or to the feeble
l11tellect of man, which its have been sounded. and
Its mysteries explored: and If the philosopher who is familiarized
with its vvonders, Jnd who has studied them as necessary
results of general laws, never ceases to admire and adore their
Author. how great should be their etfect upon Ie" gifted
minds. who must ever view them in the of inexplicable
prodigies. Man has in all >ought for a sign from
heaven, and yet he has been blind to the millions
of wonders with which he is surrounded. If the following
pages should contribute to abate this deplorable indifit'rence
to all that is grand and sublime 111 the lIniverse. and if they
Talbot's l'\1atlnal lv1aj(i(
should inspire the reader with a portlOn of that enthusiasm of
love and gratitude which can alone the mind fi1r itl
fiml the labours of the will not havL' bL'en
\vholly 22
Brewster, who would have been ordained himself but for
his fe,u of public speaking, joined two other scientific
popularizers in Scotland, Robert Chambers and Hugh
Miller, writing about the relationship between science
and Christian belief for the benefit of scientists and for
'less gifted minds'.23 The impulse behind this plea is
apparent, for at this time there was no concept of an
autonomous professional scientist in Great Britain. One
had to gain a university chair or, like Brewster to
his appointment at St Andrews, support one's
mental activities through freelance writing. Stressll1g the
relation between natural philosophy and moral philosophy
made state support of the empirical sciences justifiable,
and this is what Bre\vster was advocating: social stability
through religlOus education. In a review drafted in 1
Brewster writes: 'While the vulgar gaze in mysterious
wonder at the results of creative power, the student of
nature perceives the unity of desigll and of purpose which
pervades the whole; and he is pennitted to trace the
and pursue the laws by which the Omniscient Spirit has
accomplished His work' 24
Brewster's statement is a clear exposition of the
principle of natural theology: the idea that the organization
of the natural world establishes the eXIstence of a Creator,
and proof of his benevolence, wisdom. and power. The
famous analogy, fonnd in William Paley and other writers,
is to a watch. The order, complexity, and harmonious
functioning of the natmal universe manifests itself like
the intricate mechanism of a pocket watch, and it would
no more make sense to speak of a universe without a
maker and purpose than to propose the spontaneous creation
of a pocket watch by accidental or random actions in
nature.
2S
Natural theology pervaded early nineteenth
century thinking about science in Protestant countries,
and nearly every British writer on the inductive sciences
recognized natural theology as the ultimate goal of his
investigations.
Bre\vster was also a historian of science and was
interested in the way scientific ideas we[e transmitted
fTom gener;ltion to generation. Considering the history of
photo1:,rraphy for The j\lorth British Review in lR47, Brewster
notes that 'the history of science presents us with very
few instances in which great inventions or discoveries
have burst upon the public view like meteors, or startled
the public mind their novelty and grandeur'. Typically,
he observes, 'some sickly embryo of thought ... assumels]
the form and beauty of a living truth, when the public
taste or the wants of society have stimulated research, or
created a demand for the productions of genius'. 2(, How
ever, tor Brewster photography is one of those meteoric
discoveries, not a developmental one; and both the
Talbotype and the Daguerreotype had already embalmed the
names of their distinguished inventors Brewster puts it)
us
DOl/x/as R. IVitkel
in the popular imagination. He argues for photography's
uniqueness as a mode of by way of a
conceit pertinent to the present discussion:
memioned a
different
delineates on canvas.
or the sculptor cmbodies in those images in their eye
to which the law of vision an extental pbcc. the photo
grapher presents to Nature an artificial eye, 1110rc powerful
than his ow11 , which receives the of external objects,
and imprints on its semitivc tablet, with indeliblc lines,
their precise forms, and the lights and shadows by which these
forms are modified, He thus perm;}llellcy to details which
the eye itself is too dull to appreClate, and he represents Nature
JS she is neltber pruned hy his taste, nor decked by his
il11aginJtion, Fro1ll a11long the countless of surrounding
objects \vhich arc actually accu11lulated in pan of space,
he excludes, by l1leans of his darkened all but dw
one he wishes to perpetuate. and he can thus exlnbit and tlx
in succession all those floating and subtile forms which
Epicuru'i fanCied and Lucretius
In a f()otnote to this passage Brewster gives Creech's
translation of the lines in Lucretius to which he refers:
Next, for 'tis time,
\Vhat those are we
Which like thin films troll1 risc in streal11S,
Play in the air and upon the beal11s -
A stream of forms fr0111 cn;IY surtJce flows,
Which may be called the film or shell of those,
Because they bear the they show tbe frallle
And tlgure of the bodies whence came.""
Brewster's is a citation of the eidolon theory of perception,
which originates with Epicurus and Democritm and is
developed by Lucretius in De ReYll1l1 Natum.
2
'J It
that small membranes emanate frorn objects that then
produce their mirror image 011 flat surfaces and a visual
impression of the perceived object in the observer's eye.
Lucretius describes these emanations as imagines, simulacra
or (Ortires, small skins that radiate from objects \vithout
having corporeal substance but an infinite
number of which conform to every obJect. This theory
still claimed adherents in the nineteenth century; Nadar
reports that Balzac dreaded his daguerreotype
taken, for fear of of too many of these
emanations and, in his 1847 novel COllsill Pon5, COll
nected the daguerreotype with the capturing ofjust such
'schemata', as he called them. Another advocate was
the American essayist Oliver Wendell Holmes, who in the
late 1850s proposed that photography might be taken as
a confirmation of the Democritus skin theory.31 Mike
Weaver has noted the correspondence of Brewster's refer
ence to one of the initial reviews of Talbot's photogenic
drawing process, expounded by an anonymous reporter
in the Saturday l'vla}?azinc of 13 April 1839. Here the
\\'fiter compares 'the spells of our scientific enchanter,
Mr. Talbot', with the character in Adelbert von Chamisso's
1813 romance Pcrcv Schlc11lihl, in which the principal
character removes and sells his own shadow in exchange
for a bag of good fortune. The Saturday iHagazillc's
136
commentator notes how, like Schlemihl, 'the purchaser
[of the photograph] now kneels down in the broad sun
light, detaches the shadow {i'0111 its owner's heels, folds it up,
and puts it in his pocket'. Talbot, lifelong enthusiast
of fairy tales and himself the author of Gothic romances
about sorcerers and had met Chamisso in
18D in Berlin, where he was director of the Botanic
Gardens. Since this took place three years before
the publication of Talbot's own L;l!;cl1dary Tall'S, the allusion
in the Satrtrday }v'iagazillc would not have escaped him.
Indeed, in his Royal Society paper Talbor uses just this
image - a ,hadow, 'the most transitory of things, the
proverbial emblem of all that is and momentary'
as that which is fettered by the spells of his natural magic.
Clearly Brew,ter and Talbot did not actually subscribe to
the eidolon concept. They were trained in the Newtonian
theory, which held that light was composed of particles
emitted by a source, and after Thomas Young's
and Fresnel's wave theories Talbot and eventually
Brewster became adherents of the undulatory hypothesis.
From the standpoint of scientific method, theIr support
of wave theory distinguishes the British scientists from
someone like Auguste Comte, whose positive philosophy
Brewster criticized in the 1838 RClJic!I' for its
rejection of all such causal hypotheses.
The trope that connects shadows, the sun, and
Christianity in the Romantic period was readily sum
moned for the purposes of constructing photography's
authority in its fmt decade and was by no means dependent
upon the British for articulation, On the verso of an early
French daguerreotype made by Bryon Dorgeval 15 a
promotional label that expresses this idea vividly:
Thi, i1l1age, which fixes 011 a mirror thc' shadow itself of the
sitter, preserving their very 11ll1le, their exact glance is it
not to our eyes sweeter. more sacred than a work all canvas'
A miniature is the work of a painter the daguerrean proof
is the vvork of God, How much 1110re would it b" cherished
by a parent. or a friend, tor it is the reflectioll of the shadow,
dle thought, the deeds of the sitter's soul united with God
by the power of light,
In the fIrSt decades of photography's existence, images
. associating the emblematically with the sun
proliferated in the popular press; one of the most recurrent
was the theme 'the Slln the artist' (figure 2). Well
established literary, theological, and mystical implications
of the sun offered rich opportunities for commentators
to elaborate upon the rhetoric of the photograph as an
unprecedented of one not created by human
hands but by naturally supernatural forces. 36 John Wheeley
Gutch's photo-collage of leaf prim, (figure 3) bears the
inscription "The Glorious Sun stays his course and plays
the alchemist' ;} line fi'om Shakespeare'.; Killg jo1111 that
cleverly associates the solar-powered photographic process
with chemical enchantment, linking it to natural magic
and English literary patrimony. In the Christian tradi
tion, the sun (and light generally) is associated with Truth
and with theological truth in particular, as when Saul
T(llbot's Nafliml ,7I,,1agie
chaser
:i sun
; it up,
lUsiast
:lances
[SSO in
otanic
before
lusion
him.
st this
s, the
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ibe to
oman
rtides
mng's
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pport
from
iophy
2. Scovill Manuf;lcturing Co., "lew York, LIbel advertising daguerreotype plates.
Private Collection.
c. 1?lSO.
or its
I, and
sum
phy's
ndent
early
IS a
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- is it
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rished
ldow,
God
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sun
Tent
Well
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Figure 3. John Wheeley Gutch. 'The Gloriol/s 5111/ Sla)'., ill his COllrse and Plays tllc collage
ttors
of salted paper prints, 1 ?lS7. San Francisco Museull1 of Modern Art. San Francisco.
s an
man on the road to Damascus 'sees the light'. Accordingly,
eley these romantic appropriations of sun-imagery were meant
the to suggest that the photographic process might derive
Ilays from or have some special purchase 011 truth at a higher
that plane the kind of truth intimated by Dorgeval's label,
cess where the power of God-givell light is made to register
agIc not simply outward appearance but also the sitter's soul.
adi Talbot employs this Apollonian neologism often in his
uth writings, for instance in the title of his second book of
iaul photographs, 51111 Piwnes ill Scot/alld.
But would Talbot himself have understood his discovery
ill terms of natural theology? On 5 February 1839, three
days after the publication of his paper on photogenic
drawing, he declares himself. ill a letter to his mother,
much amused that the Literary Gazette should think that
this invention 'would affect the temporal interest of
many'. 'When I get a large frank', he continues, 'I will
send you Powell's "Tradition Unveiled", being an attack
011 the Puseyites' .38 That Talbot had a concern for the
'temporal interests', that is to say, the religious sentiments,
137
DOU,lZlas R. Nickel
of the British public is made clear by his engagement
with the Oxford Debates, as indicated by the pamphlet
he promises to send. The Reverend Baden Powell's
'Tradition Unveiled: or, An Exposition of the Pretensions
and Tendency of Authoritative Teaching in the Church',
was just off the press on 5 The target of the
pamphlet was Edward 13. Pusey, canon of Christ Church,
and the Tractarians, a group of Oxford clerics who called
for a revival of ecclesiastical authority in the Church of
England and a return to the rituals, rites, mysteries, and
orthodoxy of the early Church, which suggested to some
observers a leaning towards Rome. Powell objected
specifically to the Tractarians' demands t()f 'the dissociation
of and reason, of Christianity and its evidences',
and in the part that would have interested Talbot, argues
that the Puseyites' hostility to modern science had no basis:
I disposed to believe. that if there be any specLlI tendency
in snentific pursuits, as such, to influence the religious opinions
of those who follow them, among the great of scientific
111cn, it is, for the IllOSt part, precisely that to \vhich I havc
before referred: a disposition rather to ,lvoid engaging in
tlleological speculation, and to in the
established faith: the spirit of whicb the traditionalists
desire to cherish. ___ I venture to express my belief, that
amongst the most eminently distinguished philosophers of the
present day in this coumry. there exists evell J profOlllldly
religion, spiriL
4
"
Powell contends that the only footing for religious t:lith
is conviction, and conviction reguires the kind of evidence
that science and other forms of rational deliberation can
provide. Talbot would have agreed, for in 1839, besides his
announcement of photogenic drawing, his current project
was the drafting of a treatise entitled The Antiquity of the
Book Genesis, Illustrated by Some New In
this publication Talbot marshals textual data from the dassics
to argue an dating for Genesis, and thus supplies a
philological context to the debate then transpiring over
how to justify the evidence of geological time with the
biblical account of a six-day creation. Talbot's case is
ingenious: he l11aintains that the Mosaic story of creation
was handed down to the Greeks, but in a form so
conupted through translation and repetidon that the names
were mangled and the subjects reworked into indigenous
mythology. He writes: 'An attentive and unprejudiced
examination of the ancient authorities will, I think, con
vince every one, that one of the chief objects of heathen
worship was the SUN. And what could be more natural
than to adore the beneficent luminary, the source of all
the earth's fertility, and the fountain of perenniallight?,42
Talbot continues: 'The next great divinity of the heathen,
to whom I shall advert, is the Goddess of NATURE.
According to the most natural and expressive allegory,
these two divinides, the Sun and the Earth, were held to be
the original parents of mankind, and of all living things' .43
He then suggests that Pandora, described by Hesiod in
the Greek story as the 'wife of the first-created man', is
actually the consequences of box-opening and
apple-eating being correlated.
41
Talbot supports this con
138
jecture by tracing the etymology of the name 'Cybele',
the Grectt Mother and goddess of nature in ancient Asia
Minor, to the Sibyls, who wandered the lands declaring
future events and foretelling the destinies of men. The
Sibyls wrote their prophecies on leaves, and released them
to the \vinds, Talbot reports, and, highlighting the aspect
to which Brewster was surely alluding when he described
photogenic drawings as 'sibylline sketches', Talbot recounts
hovv the prophetesses evinced a dualisnl 'between human
and divine: or, that both these opinions were maintained
by turns respecting them'. The word 'Genesis' itself is
traced to 'Gynaeceas', wife of Pan and mother of llacchus
and Midas. "'Genesis", then, \vas, in my opinion, the
goddess of Creative Nature among the ancient Greeks',
he concludes. 'She was Creation Personified'.
Talbot's theological speculations take for granted
Powell's assertion that the Scriptures can withstand ration
alist inquiry without undermining their significance as
divine revelatioll. Natural theology held that the Almighty
had bequeathed Man (wo great nooks: the Scriptures, and
the Book of Nature. It was understood Jmong Talbot's
peers that the scientist's task was to unlock the Book of
Nature, to delve into its intricacies for the way they
manifested God's divine plan. In a notebook entry for
3 MJrch 1H39, 011 the same page \vhere he muses upon
photography as 'magic pictures', 'Nature magnified by
Herself', and as one of'Nature's Marvels', Talbot scribbles
the line 'Look through Nature to Nature's God,.47 This
phrase comes from Alexander Pope's Essay Oil l'v1al1 of
1732 but was picked up in the Romantic period, in
particular byWordsworth.
4B
Whatever Talbot's reasons
for jotting it down amidst his photographic word
play, it summarizes perfectly the mission of the natural
theologian nature was not looked at, it was looked
through. Talbot was a Baconian scientist, in Thomas Kuhn's
defl11ition of the term: According to Bacon, nature \vas
like Proteus, whose true identity lay concealed under a
variety of external shapes and tC)[Jns until he was bound.
'Nature exhibits herself more clearly under the trials and
vexations of art than when left to herself', he writes.
49
Baconian scientists conducted experiments to force nature
out of its natural state, the better to understand the realities
it concealed. Talbot regarded even modern methods
sllch as inductive reasoning as tools demonstrating the
unified, preordained pattern of creation. 'Such were ... the
reflections which led me to the invention of this theory,
and which first impelled me to explore a path so deeply
hidden Jmong nature's secrets', Talbot writes of his
discovery of photogenic drawings. 'They are impressed
by Nature's hand; and what they want as yet of delicacy
and finish of execution arises chiefly from our \vant of
sufficient knowledge of her laws'. 50
When contemplating any of the humble leaf images
that inaugurated the photof,'Tapbic medium (fIf,'11re 4), Talbot
and his scientific colleagues would see III them what we
may fail to appreciate: order, complexiry, beauty, and,
above all, intentionality, an incarnation in microcosm of the
sub
lies
in 1
by
ofl
me
eel
the
the
'bele',
t Asia
laring
, The
them
lspect
:ribed
:ounts
uman
:ained
self is
cchus
I, the
eeks',
anted
Figure 4, William Henry Fox Talbot, untitled photogenic drawing, L 184(), International Museum
Ltion of Photography, Eastman HOllse, Rochester,
ce as
Lighty
sublimity of all creation, Implicit in the Talbot example
5, and
lies what is made explicit in a photogenic drawing created
Ibot's
in 1839 by the elderly German scientistJohan Carl Enslen
ok of
by superimposing an oak leaf and a lithographed head
they
of Christ (figure 5),51 Talbot needed no explanation: as a
y for
member of the scientific clerisy, his methodological con
upon
cepts and epistemological presumptions \vere identical to
by
those of natural theology, The photogenic drawing, like
ibbles
the leaf's process of photosynthesis, was understood to
This
an of
d, in
asons
I'ord
Hural
ooked
uhn's
was
der a
)Und.
sand
tes.
49
ature
llities
:hods
; the
.. the
eory,

f his
essed
[cacy
1t of
lages
albot
t we
and,
Figure 5, Johan Carl Enslen, untitled photogenic lH40.
fthe University Library, Tlibingen,
partake of the marvellous, responding to divine light and,
by its very workings, manifesting divine intelligence; in
giving 'nature as she was', in Brewster's words, it could
not help but automatically register something of the
perfectioll that nature represented. In so far as the chemical
mechanism of photography W;15 still not fully grasped at
the time of the 1839 annOUllcement, the technique \vas
for Talbot indeed like the Sibyl human and divine.
empirical and esoteric. It united the two great divinities
the Sun and Nature --- with Cartesian optics to engender
a new form of natural magic.
We now see Talbot and his science through the filter
of modernism and the post-Darwinian professionalization
of scientific culture, but it is worth remembering that the
word 'science' itself came illto common usage only in
the 18305. (Talbot's friend William \'X/hewell coined the
tenn 'scientist' around this time, 'natural philosopher'
being the more common designation heretofore.) Talbot's
invention entered society in the twilight of 3 kind of
science that understood the Book of Nature to be an
inexhaustible repository of marvels, wonders, and secrets,
infinitely deep and ultimately unknowable in its totality.
The D31\;\'inian period to follow would couch the scientist
as an explorer, and nature as an unknown country - by
implication, a country that will eventually be mapped.
settled, and put to use. For most of its history photography
has been caught in the latter paradigm and confused with
truth. Perhaps the moment has arrived when we can
appreciate that the history of photography is not about
truth, but about belief, and that Talbot's photographs are
best understood when we appreciate the cosmology and
belief-system that brought them into being.
Notes
IIl.-'nry Fox Trllbot, SOllJe (J(({)trllf rhe .1ff
London; R, and J E. Taylor 183'), as III
cd, Be"'l110nt Newbll, Nt'w York: Museum
19HO. 25,
139
in
invoking William Whewdl'l Histor), of the llldwlipc
SciCIW'_\. Parker 1 S37, the most recent and thorough exposition
of the inductive rnethod aVJilablc. Jnd in many ways J corrective to
John Herschel's Preliminary Discourse lHi the Study t?f ;'\'aturtJl I'llllo"",I1\'.
London: LongI11<lJl, Onne. Brown &" Green IX30.
approach might best be described 'inductIve-deductive'; Whewdl
was J110rc of Kantian, stressing concepts and ideas oVer l-ler::chcliJI1
empiricism. In Wh",vell's schem.:, the three steps of ill duction included:
(1) the explication of J COtlc<'pt; (2) the rolligation of [Jets by nl(-,ans
of that and (3) verification by 'Collig:ltion'
was orif.,>1ual cOlltributJon, by he 111eanr the
could identity a pattern to unrebted
(,tS Talbot puts it) 'to consequences altogether
unexpected, rl'1110Le froUl usual experienct\ and contrJry to almost
universal beliee. Whewell was lllade l'rofes;or of Moral Theology at
in IH37.
], of in febtiollship to po"itivist thought
Carol Annstrong, SCCIlCS ill d Library.' tfl(O' Plwt{:f!raph ill the 8th)_!:,
18.rJ-1875, Cambridge, MA: MIT Pre" 199H.
4. Newhall, 25.
TJlbot. 'Photogenic Ora\ving', LhcfI1ry Ca;tcttc no, 11S0 (2
1 K39). T,.lIbot here likens his proc"ss also [0 'the Genius 0['
Lamp' in its (74).
(,. Sec Larry J. Remrds of fhe /)'W'II ,,( T"/!>Of's ;\!,'Icb""k.<
P & Q, Cambridge University Pres' 1996,35.
7. 4 February 1839, Talbot fi)r the copy of
beautIful discoveries
Un."w"tcr's fderence is [0
ancient female orades as;.:ociared with fv1y thanks
to Dr Larry Schaaf for making thill source to lIle.
H. Brewster to Talbot, 12 February 1IlYJ, above. Brewster herc discusses
his o\vn process for 'pain ring pictures upon blood',
\I. 'There is ::onlething supernatural going on tlerschd to Talbot,
16 March 1 H41, ,tboye.
10. 'New Publicatiom', ,AlhnWfIIlrI no. 'n7 (2 August lK45), 771. The
phrase \vas not a original to the reviewer. hO\Ve\TL 1 n 1832
David Brewster incident of what he terms 'modern
Emperor B,ISel ofMacedollla,
a nllrror of his :-.011. See Urc\yster. LttCf.' 011
Ala,Qic, {o Sir I+'a/lcr Se,m, H"rl., London: J. Murrav 1832, ('U.
The Sp(YtatOf, \vriting of rJaguerre's announCCl11ent ill rv1an:h 1H.)t),
uses silnil;lf lanb'l.uge: 'An invt'ntioll h:ls recently bcet} 111adc public in
Paris [hat seems more like SOllle marvel of a fairy talc or delusion of
llecrolnancy than a practical reality: Jt al110unts to nothing less than
111aking light produce pefnunC'llt pictures. Cited by ReaU1110nt
Ncwhall, 'Eightec'n Thirty-Nine: The Birth or Photography', 111
Dis((wcry "lid lllvwtioll. Malibu: J Paul Getty Museum
11, H. Fox Talbot, T/,,' Pencil of ,,',lturc, London: Longman, Brown, Green
& Longll1ans 1844, unpagillated.
12, Ibid.
13, See Thomas Wedgwood and Sir HUlllphy Accollnt of a
Method of Paintings Upon Gb". and Profiles, by
the Agency Light Upon Nitf<ue of Silver', "f lite R")"I/
Jusliwli'l// '?f Grcal Britdill 1 (180:2), J7()-7.t, reprinted in Newhall,
lS-Ir,.
14. I discuss this aspect of Barthes's prolen ;n greater detail ill 'Rolalld
Thrthes and the Silapshot', Hi.wry (:f Ph(1{,\emphJ' 24:3 (Autumn 20(!O),
232-35.
15. See \Vil1iJm E31110n, ScicHce and the (!f ,\:"alure: Hooks '?{ St'CI'cts in
Mediellal alld Earl)' A4"dcnr CII/illre, Princeton: Princetoll University
Pres; 1994, 121 -22.
16. John Baptist Porta, 'The Preface to the Reader', "'dluml :Hagie fu XX
Hook;, London: 1651-; edition.
17. Anbrloo and Smart Clark, eds, H!iuh[m/r ,lIId ,>I'Wi! ill Elllvpe:
,lIId Niuctcelllh Ccmllric.', Philadelphia: University of
PreIS 199'), 22.
IH, On Brewster, see ':HII'I)'r of'Sdel/(c'; Sir nwid Brell'slcr 1781-1868, cds
Alison and]. R. R. Clmstie, Edinburgh: Royal Scottish
Museum Studies 19?14.
19. Brewster to Forbes, 23 February I H3'). Sr Andrews University Library,
quoted in Graham Smith, Disciples or P//(J/Ograph.' 111 Ihe BrcwJler
Alhl1l11, Malibu: J. Paul Getty Museum 19')0,27.
20. Brewster, u'ltcrs 011 ,"'alural 14.
21. Talbot Ilukes the eye--calJwra amlogy in Plate Ill, 'Artides of China',
Till' Pcndl of X"'lIrc, I I.
22. Brewster, u'llm 011 ,,,',llm,,1
n Robert Chambers, VCil(QC, or
J. Churchill 1844; Hugh Miller,
Johnstone &: Hunter 1H47.
24. Morrison-Low ,llld Christie.
r
.....!. \\lilliJll1 PJlcy, '[,hco/{!,<!},:
Amiblltl's of the Deif)" Gllicactl .1i,,,, I
Wilks &: Taylor 1802.
26, David Brewster, 'Photography',
(August IIl47), 24H.
27, Ibid., 249.
2K, Ibid.
I H.
l\,'alura/ Hi,iIM)' d Crcalioll, London:
fool-prims ':f the Cmu"r, London:
{n, Evidenrcs rfrc ExisteJlce and
11,(, Appc"J'a/i(CS of ;\,',1/11(<', London:
nrc ;\,'orth Brltis/, RcviclI' no. 15
29. See Hubertus von Al1lelunxcn, Die Lcil: ncr Erfimltmg
d", J'hNo,Qr"pilie d"r(h lVil/ialll Hmry I:"", T,libor, Berlin: Dirk Nishen
1%8, H.
.'0. See N:ldar, 'My Lite as a Photographer' 11,)001,9, ,1l1d Rosalind Krauss's
discussion, N:I<tlf', Ocro!",r:; (Summer I97H), 29.... 47
31. Oliver Wendell 'The Stereoscope and tht' Stereograph', Allantic
AlonlMy (june 1 H59). 73H, reprinte,l in Newhall, 1'1101(;Qraph)': Essayl
awl iJ1ltJgcs, 53.
32. Salllrdo), 14:435 (13 April It(\\I), 139.
Mih Weaver, with ,1 Camen'. in Hellr), Fox Ti1lbot: Srla/cd
'{exls <1//(/ Ox;,)[(l; Clio Press 1 ')')2, 6.
34. Morrison-Low and Christie.
35. Robert Flynn Johnson and Robert H:mhorn Shimshak, Ifte j),l 1l'fY of
L(J!.hf: })aXIICIT(orypcs frollJ till' RobCl1 Hdr3h,H'tI ShiliL,hak Collertion, San
francisco: Fine Am MUSCUlUS 1'Jtl(i, 9.
3(,. The correspondence of this tnedieval and
il..enais"ll1ce Veronica's Veil, or :WIWlrof)()1 the made not
bv hu man hand,' - was noted by Relleclions
Olf "'ew York: Hill &: Wang l'JH1, H:2. For" fuller
discllssion of the the/lie, sec Joseph Leo Koerner, n,c .\101111'1)1 Self
Porff:litlfrc iff CerHian /(('Iwiss(}tlcc Arl, Chicago: University, of
Press 1993.
37. Genoa Shepley kindly made tlllS source known to me.
3H. Talbot to Lady Elizabeth, :; february 1K:\9 (Li\39-H).
39. Baden Powell, Traditioll C'fI'ci/ctI: or, a" ExposiriOIl or tire Prftellsions and
TClIdelley orAUllwrilarive ill Ihe Chllrch, LOlldon. 1 January I H39.
40. Ibid" 64.
41. H, Fox Talbo[, Tire /ll1fiquif)' of the Hook of' emesis, IIIustrafed by Some
['ielll London: Longnull, C)rll1c, Green, Urown & Longman
HO,).
42. Ibid., 9.
43. Ibid., ')-11),
44. Talbot's efforts at Gothic romance include 'The Magic Mirror',
a tale on tbe Pandora legend in which sorcerer's daughter
UllCOY','l, a mirror meant to veiled. 'The Magic Mirror',
L()!ftldtlFY Tafes, in Verse awl Prose
l
col/erfed hy H, r'ox TO{fh'"d, Esq.,
London: James Ridgway I H311.
45. Talbot, llmiquit)', 22,
46. Ibid., 40-41.
47. Schaaf, Rewrds or Ihe DOIT'Il of
48. Alexander Pope, All 1's.,(/)' 01/ ;Hall, ill I:,,"r Epi:tlcs (1732), Epistle IV,
line 332. See mv discussion in 'Nature's Supernaturahsm: William
Henry Fox Talbot end Botanical Illustration', in illicrsmiolls: Lilhography,
""d ti,e Traditio"s 4 ed. Ka[hken Stewart
University of New Mexico Press 199H, 15-23
49.
50.
51. Enslen sent this image to Talbot ill September 1840. See Enslen to
Talbot, 10 September jH,IO, Lacock Abbey ILA40-691. On Enslen, see
the exhibition catalogue Silber liJld Sal:::: LfJr Friih:::eil der P!/Oloyraphie
illl d('llISci'ClJ SprflrhrafJl11 , Cologne: Edition Brdus 1989, 127-41.
Fi!
ne
Tal
ord
cuI:
del
to]
a c
an{
gra
Hrs, 140