William Henry Fox Talbot was a distinguished English gentleman of the 19th Century, and a failed artist/draftsman. That defeat seems to have propelled him toward his invention of “photogenic drawing,” or “photography.” He put together a book in 1844 called The Pencil of Nature, his metaphorical way of describing the new type of drawing with glass lens and salted paper.

In his monograph Fox Talbot included simple still-life images and genre subjects, of which my favorite has always been, “The Open Door.” It shows a door made with thick wooden planks studded with metal, standing half open. In the murky interior we can see leaded glass windows, a luxurious addition to a horse stable.  There is a broom resting at an angle of 45 degrees across the doorway, creating a vector which lifts the image above the ordinary. The broom is a rough implement made of long twigs lashed together and fastened to a pole with a leather strap. Whenever I see a rustic tool like this, I want to take a picture, like the one I made above at Fort Boonesborough, Kentucky.