The Theory of the Copy : Henry Fox Talbot and The Pencil of Nature
Part of : Γράμμα : περιοδικό θεωρίας και κριτικής ; Vol.21, 2013, pages 93-113
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93-113
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This paper explores how Henry Fox Talbot's enigmatic mid-nineteenthcentury "book" The Pencil of Nature staged a key moment in media history. By working through some of the key themes that framed Talbot's conception of the copying process, it is possible to examine a vital moment in the historical drama of mechanical reproduction. In this paper I argue that, departing from Walter Benjamin's formulation of the copy, Talbot's emotional investment in the copying process effectively imbricates the modern image in an affective field of historical memory, securing the meaning of the copy for futurity. The Pencil of Nature demonstrates in its relation to images, and to the copying process, a particular mode of collecting, constructing, cultivating, and transferring meaning. Reading The Pencil of Nature as a manifestation of lyrical, etymological, and antiquarian modes of nineteenth-century thought, this essay negotiates how Talbot nostalgically and sentimentally positions the reproducible modern image, prefiguring image production systems in modernity and postmodernity.
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References (1):
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