Fixing The Shadows

Henry Fox Talbot

I watched a documentary recently and I found it very interesting. The way it was constructed with the different images and effects to produce it was fascinating to watch . The information about the various people involved, techniques used and how photography has taken on different ways of life from the very early stages to the present day was fascinating to listen to also. From the documentary, I learned about two figures Louis Daguerre who was painter and Henry Fox Talbot who was an inventor and the photographs they produced. I found Louis Daguerre's photographs extremely life like because of the way they suck up into the surface and I found Henry Fox Talbot's photographs beautiful and atmospheric. I also learned about the two techniques that they had discovered which became revolutionary in the world of photography which I found very interesting. Daguerre's was metal based which eventually led to the Daguerrotype which was the first practicable photographic process and Talbot's was paper based which would eventually lead to to the Kodak which was a camera. The Kodak was of particular interest to me. It was invented by a man named George Eastman who was a bank clerk but was interested in photography. The Kodak  changed the way the people looked at the camera. People for the first time looked at the camera and said cheese. So it became more an adventure and more of a fun enterprise and not the serious one it was before where people were very stoical in their expressions as it was meant to be a work of art. He also popularized the use of the roll of film which would eventually make photography more of an industry. The Kodak would eventually make important use of the Vernacular which refers to the creation of photographs taken from everyday life. They usually were taken by amateurs. The Kodak became an important form of vernacular expression as the photographs it took became a freeze in time. Over the years photography has taken on two main streams of art, one as an art form and the other one as a way to get people to remember something.  So overall  I thought this documentary was well put together and the information was extremely interesting and I would recommend it for viewing.