The Pencil of Nature
The Pencil of Nature, in the words of its author, Henry Fox Talbot, was intended as "the first attempt to publish a series of plates or pictures wholly executed by the new art of Photogenic Drawing, without the aid whatever from the artist's pencil." Talbot went on to stress that the images were "depicted by optical and chemical means alone, without the aid of any one acquainted with the art of drawing."
The series was published in London between 1844 and 1846 in six separate fasicles. (The word is from the Latin facisculus which means little bundle). Printing technology at that time was unable to reproduce photos in books, so real photograhic prints were included in the fasicles.
The original copies are extremely rare. The Pencil of Nature has been reprinted in 1968 and in 1989 by two different publishers, but they, too, are either out-of-print or very hard to find. It has only been recently that I was lucky enough to come across a copy of the the 1968 reprint.
Because of my passion for photo history, I was blown away that I was actually able to get my hands on this book!
Because I am am fascinated with golden section design patterns, I find the title graphic very intriguing. That it contains many golden ratio measurements is not surprising to me, due to the period, Talbot's intellect and education. I have started to recreate the image in Adobe Illustrator and have discovered an underlying dynamic rectangle grid. The design was not thrown together quickly, but evidences quite a bit of planning. It is not easy to reproduce with modern computer technology. Because of the precision tools I have at my disposal, I can make the entire graphic snap into the underlying grid, which I have done. I had to make some changes to the original to make it fit, because it is off a bit. It was too difficult to remain faithful to the original variance, so I stuck with the original goal that was not attained. I only had to recreate one corner to copy and reproduce the three other corners. As you can see, I am not finished; it is still a work in progress.
Even though the photos are fairly simple, they are well composed. I see a lot of golden section measurements in them as well. Whether this is accidental or planned, I do not know.
The text is amazing. I thought that it was most unfortunate that it is not easily available. I discovered that the URL www.thepencilofnature.com was not taken, so I bought it and published the text.