William Henry Fox Talbot was one of the early inventors of photography. At the same time Louis Daguerre developed daguerreotypes in Paris, Talbot had begun producing calotypes, which employed a solution of sodium to fix photosensitive paper after its exposure to light. “How charming it would be if it were possible to cause these natural images to imprint themselves durably, and remain fixed upon the paper,” he once mused. Born on February 11, 1800 in Dorset, United Kingdom, he studied at Trinity College, Cambridge and was a scholar in a number of fields including chemistry, Egyptology, art history, and botany. The notion of a photograph dawned on Talbot in 1833 while he was using a camera lucida as an aid in drawing the Italian countryside near Lake Como. Dissatisfied with his inability capture the beauty of the refracted image he saw, the artist began experimenting with chemical solutions to fix images on paper coated with silver nitrate. In the earliest of these attempts, he successfully captured exact silhouettes of botanical specimens through suspending them in glass above the paper and exposing them to the sun. In the decades that followed, Talbot continued his attempts at creating permanent images up until his death on September 17, 1877 in Lacock, United Kingdom. Though many of his calotypes remain fugitive or have deteriorated in condition, Talbot’s contribution to the future of the medium is a singular accomplishment. Today, the artist’s works are held in the collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, among others.