Magdalen Bridge, Oxford

The Bodleian Libraries in Oxford has launched an innovative web-based resource that brings together the complete works of British photographic pioneer William Henry Fox Talbot, available to the public at foxtalbot.bodleian.ox.ac.uk. 

For the first time ever, users can discover and search through annotated digitised images of Talbot’s photographs gathered from collections around the world. The fascinating images show the emergence and development of photography while capturing moments of early Victorian life.

The Bodleian Libraries have spent the last two years translating his works into a modern online form. The catalogue integrates the holdings of more than 100 international public and private collections including items from the British Library, the National Media Museum, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Smithsonian Institution, as well as smaller but significant holdings in Russia, Estonia, South Africa, Canada, France and others worldwide.

Launching with more than 1,000 images, these will be added to weekly until the entire 25,000 negatives and prints known worldwide have been published. They include:

• Beautiful early cityscapes of Oxford, London and Paris and others
• Numerous images taken on and around the grounds of Lacock Abbey, Talbot’s family home in Wiltshire
• Some of Talbot’s best known images such as ‘The Open Door’ and ‘The Haystack’
  
• Photographs by Talbot’s close circle of family and colleagues, with whom he collaborated – Nicolaas Henneman, Calvert R Jones, George Bridges, and Henry Collen, along with Talbot’s wife Constance and his mother Lady Elisabeth Feilding.