Foto storie di un istante - "I primitivi"

[Music] [Music] [Music] 1846. The Englishman Henry Fox Talbot is photographing one of his friends. Next to him, one of his collaborators is photographing a statue of the Three Graces, while another is photographing an old engraving. Capturing the exact image of real life at that time was quite new. Talbot's first experiments date back to 1830. He

called them photogenic drawings. A plant is placed on a sheet of paper coated with a solution of table salt and silver nitrate. The plant and paper are then exposed to light and the photosensitive paper blackens all around the plant, acting as a mask. There is no intention here of creating a composition or seeking

special effects, but only the simple pleasure of seeing, thanks to the action of light on the silver salts, a dream come true, a 15,000-year-old dream, going back to the Neolithic era when man left handprints on the walls of caves, the outlines fixed with a mixture of paint and saliva. But just like those

Neolithic stencils, Talbot's photogenic drawings are nothing more than imprints, meres and shadows. The true image of reality, with its full and empty spaces, appeared in 1839. It was a daguerreotype, named after the Frenchman Dager. The image captured on a copper plate is very clear and precise, but it is a unique image that cannot

be reproduced or modified. It remains forever exactly as it was taken, transformed only by the passage of time by oxidation and scratches. [Music] A few months later, Talbot perfected the calotype. The image was captured on a simple sheet of paper coated with silver iodine. This is a negative image. Blacks and whites appear reversed. This