ABSTRACT
Salted paper is as old as the invention of photography, which by art history standards is a comparatively young art of a mere 180 years. The discovery of photography is historically marked by Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre's announcement in France of the daguerreotype in January 1839, but William Henry Fox Talbot announced his "photogenic drawing" or salted paper process to England that very same month. Salted paper is monochrome, time-consuming by comparison, and requires commitment to do well. It was the first photography-on-paper process invented and it became the basis of black and white photography as we know it today. When Talbot revealed his process to the world, the only depiction of reality occurred in paintings, drawings, engravings, and the like. In fact, at the moment of Talbot's discovery the word photography didn't even exist. He called his process photogenic drawing because, to his way of thinking, light was drawing the image on the paper.
