Seeing the Negative

The fact that photographic chemistry more naturally created a negative image than a positive one has changed the course of photographic history quite radically. Samuel Morse claimed that it was the single factor in discouraging further work on the subject, and Nicéphore Niépce turned towards methods of photographically engraved plates and optically reversed polished plates - these led directly to the discovery of the daguerreotype. Of all the inventors that experimented with silver nitrate, only William Henry Fox Talbot found them quite beautiful. He even expressed his preference for the negative image over the positives for some subjects. I propose a lecture on the subject of the photographically negative, and the perception of negative photographic representation in the nineteenth century. Using written materials from the correspondence of Niépce, Talbot, John Frederick William Herschel and others, I will examine the often negative attitudes towards negative imaging and discuss how those attitudes changed the course of the invention of photography.