Preparing biographies
When a newcomer to photography wrote in to the Photographic News in 1858 expressing bewilderment at how to keep the sensitive paper supported in the camera, Davis came to the rescue. Speaking with the confident voice of experience, he suggested a series of pins rather than the more common glass pressure plate. None of Davis’s work has yet come to light, perhaps, as he confessed to the Photographic News, because “for some time past my ardour for talbotype experiments has vanished before the fascinations of collodion.” The published version of his letter revealed neither his residence nor his occupation.
Roger Taylor & Larry J. Schaaf Impressed by Light: British Photographs from Paper Negatives, 1840-1860 (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2007)
This biography is courtesy and copyright of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and is included here with permission.
Date last updated: 4 Nov 2012.
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