Capturing the Light: A Story of Genius, Rivalry and the Birth of Photography - Softcover

Rappaport, Helen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1509892036 ISBN 13: 9781509892037

Publisher: Macmillan, 2018

Synopsis

Capturing the Light starts with a tiny scrap of purple-tinged paper, 176 years old and about the size of a postage stamp. On it you can just make out a tiny, ghostly image of a gothic window, an image so small and perfect that it ‘might be supposed to be the work of some Lilliputian artist’: the world’s first photographic negative.

This captivating book traces the lives of two very different men in the 1830s, both racing to be the first to solve one of the world’s oldest problems: how to capture an image and keep it for ever. On the one hand there is Henry Fox Talbot: a quiet, solitary gentleman-amateur tinkering away on his farm in the English countryside. On the other Louis Daguerre, a flamboyant, charismatic French showman in search of fame and fortune.

Only one question remains: who will get there first?

About this title

About the Authors

Roger Watson is a world authority on the early history of photography. He is the Curator of the Fox Talbot Museum at Lacock Abbey and an occasional lecturer at DeMontfort University in Leicester. He is the co-author, along with historian Helen Rappaport, of Capturing the Light.

Helen Rappaport is a historian with a specialism in the nineteenth century. She is the author of eleven published books, including Ekaterinburg: The Last Days of the Romanovs and Magnificent Obsession: Victoria, Albert and the Death that Changed the Monarchy. She is also the author, with Roger Watson, of Capturing the Light. For more information, you can visit her website at www.helenrappaport.com.

Edition details

• Publisher: Macmillan
• Publication date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1509892036
• ISBN 13: 9781509892037
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 337