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Arts & Culture

The Aesthetics of Ruin in Romantic Era Photography

Quick fact

William Henry Fox Talbot, inventor of the calotype, called his 1844 book of photographs 'The Pencil of Nature' – yet its images of ruins often appear soft and romantic, not merely documentary.

Why this is interesting

Today we scroll through photos of ancient temples with perfect clarity, but the first photographers of ruins chose blurry, shadowy images. Why would they deliberately make decay look even more ruined?