Unlike daguerreotypes, the rival process announced by the Victorian polymath William Henry Fox Talbot produced a paper negative that could be used to print multiple positive photographs, each with a soft, atmospheric character. Although lacking the absolute clarity of the daguerreotype, Talbot’s process led to nearly all subsequent photography until the digital age. Talbot was a serious botanist, but one senses here that within a few years of inventing paper-print photography, Talbot was not merely taking documentary images of the world but creating images with artistic intent.