Mule
Henry Fox Talbot, The Oriel Window, Lacock Abbey, seen from the inside c. Summer 1835
Could the window picture be read as an emblem of itself, the very photogenic drawing process that has made its own existence possible? When you think about it, Talbot has set up his camera at exactly the point in the South Gallery where the sensitive paper once sat in his own modified camera obscura. His camera obscura looks out at the inside of the metaphorical lens of the camera of his house (which he later claimed was “the first that was ever known to have drawn its own picture”). He is, in other words, taking a photograph of photography at work making this photograph. (9)
Geoffrey Batchen offers expansive and creative readings of early photogenic drawings by Henry Fox Talbot. I find his exploration of the “desiring production” of photographs in Each Wild Idea and Burning With Desire to be compelling. But the closer I look at his essays, the more I wonder if he is really exploring his own desire rather than the desires of early photographers. Many of his assertions seem quite astute on the surface, but as I think them through they sort of dissolve.
