(Un)successful experiments

Thomas Wedgwood was the son of the famous British potter. But this Wedgwood didn’t follow in his father’s footsteps making plates. Could he be the “godfather of photography”?

Wedgwood’s first images, using paper and, more successfully, white leather coated with silver nitrate were unfixed, so continued to darken when exposed to light.

It was these early unsuccessful experiments, creating impermanent images using a camera obscura and silver salts, that were documented in a text for the Royal Institution and could, quite possibly, have paved the way for advances in the photographic industry.

Although it was science that drove the invention of photography, its use is now so commonplace that it transcends science, technology, information, the everyday, and the arts.

In a project in 2018, The New York Times chose six poems and then invited photographers to take inspiration from the words.

Read Being Women: Poetry and Imagery on The New York Times.

Writing

Find a photograph that you like for any reason. Take inspiration from the photograph – how does it make you feel, what does it remind you of, what do you notice?

Can you create a poem or short piece of writing that is your translation of that image?

We’d love to see what you come up with, if you’d like to share.

Photo by Vladimir Kramer on Unsplash