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early years of the medium, the emerging photographer
could experiment with lighting, timing, tonal qualities,
texture and subject arrangement without interruption or
complaint from a live subject.
The natural world was also of great interest to nine-
teenth-century photographers. One of the principal
inventors of photography, William Henry Fox Talbot
had a scientifi c interest in nature and natural phenomena,
including botany. For Talbot, photography was a physi-
cal manifestation of the wonders of nature, a working
tool, a unique recording system and an art. In his fi rst
book of photographs, The Pencil of Nature (1844), he
hoped to show how nature might ‘draw’ or ‘fi x’ itself
on paper. The term ‘photography,’ literally means ‘light
drawing’ or ‘light writing’ and in The Pencil of Nature
Talbot gives an account of photography in relation to
painting and its traditions.
Talbot hoped that photography would be an aid to
scientists and to artists in their attempts to represent the
world. From this time, the extent to which photography
continued to be understood in relation to the arts was
hotly debated. During the second half of the century,
painting exhibitions were often reviewed and discussed
in photography publications. Photography’s role was
frequently a central focus of photographic societies’
meetings and discussion centred on what constituted ac-
ceptable themes for photographers in order to legitimise
their work as Art. In the earliest years after the medium’s
invention, the acknowledged topics included landscapes,
cityscapes, portraiture and still lifes.
Historically, still life is an ancient genre, traditionally
associated with the medium of oil painting. By defi nition,
still lifes are an arrangement of inanimate artefacts, often
food (especially fruit and dead game), plants and textiles,
for example. The composition of still lifes can range from
highly elaborate displays to simple arrangements, posed
within a domestic setting. While still lifes are most often
a subject of painting, throughout history other media have
been used, including mosaics, watercolour, collage and,
of course, photography. Some of the earliest known im-
ages that can be described as still lifes have been found
in ancient Egyptian funerary painting.
Despite the existence of still lifes in Greek, Roman
and Renaissance art, the form emerged as an independent
subject in the West only in the sixteenth century. The
genre was highly regarded by artists such as Carravag-
gio, who elevated still life to a status that was more than
merely decorative. Still lifes fl ourished in seventeenth
century Dutch painting where sumptuous arrangements
of food, fl owers and objects celebrated nature as well
as Christian, philosophical and metaphysical ideas. The
fl ora and fauna of exotic places was also a popular still
life subject. As historians such as John Berger note,
still lifes embody a moment in the history of art where
merchandise becomes subject matter in itself.
Frenchman Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin is cel-
ebrated as the most notable early still life painter dur-
ing the peak of the genre’s popularity in Europe, in the
eighteen century. Still lifes were especially popular
in France, Spain and Italy at this time and were often
included in tromp l’oeil paintings. By the early nine-
teenth century in Europe there was little demand for
still life painting. However, it received a boost in the
region through the still lifes of much-famed artists
such as Gustave Courbet, Francisco de Goya and the
Impressionist Paul Cézanne who pushed the fi eld toward
non-representational art. The term ‘still life’ became
accepted in the seventeenth century but there remained
a diverse vocabulary for this type of imagery up until
then including, nature morte in French and vanitas in
the Netherlands, for example.
Little has changed in style or iconography in still life
photography from these prototypes in painting. Nine-
teenth century photographic still lifes are most often
tabletop arrangements of materials traditionally found
in still life precursors: fruit, crockery, fl owers, shells,
statues and dead game. This type of image making at-
tracted a number of photographers, notably the inventors
of photography, Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre and
Talbot. Other photographers, like Adolphe Braun and
Jules Dubosco, also used props such as skulls to make
visual connections with painting and its capacity for
symbolism, which was also a High Victorian interest
and widely understood.
In a letter to his short term partner Daguerre, pho-
tography pioneer Nicéphore Niépce refers to two He-
liographs, only one of which has been identifi ed. The
image, known as La table servie, shows a set table, laid
with a tablecloth for a meal with bowls, cutlery and a
goblet. The date of the image has been disputed, but
historians suggest it was taken somewhere between
1823 and 1829, with most dating it around 1827. Pro-
duced years before the medium had even been offi cially
invented, Niépce’s image is considered the fi rst still life
photograph.
Daguerre’s fi rst successful daguerreotype was also
a still-life, taken in 1837, in a window sill. Entitled
Still life, it shows a group of plaster casts, a framed
print and a wicker wrapped bottle. Daguerre’s interests
refl ect both the technological limitations of the earli-
est daguerreotypes and the nineteenth-century desire
to collate and categorize, as seen in the establishment
of museums and their impulse to catalogue the world
around us. His famous Shells and Fossils of 1839, is also
suggestive of this interest in classifi cation and evokes
painterly still lifes devoted to meticulously refl ecting
earthly existence. This tradition continues throughout
the history of nineteenth-century still life photography
by photographers such as Adolphe Bilordeaux, who
created teeming, allegorical compositions that refer-