Wrack. Artist: William Henry Fox Talbot (British, Dorset 1800-1877 Lacock). Dimensions: 22 x 17.5 cm (8 11/16 x 6 7/8 in.), irregularly trimmed. Date: 1839.This evanescent trace of a biological specimen, among the rarest of photographs, was made by William Henry Fox Talbot just months after he first presented his invention, photography--or "photogenic drawing," as he called it--to the public. Talbot's earliest images were made without a camera; here a piece of slightly translucent seaweed was laid directly onto a sheet of photosensitized paper, blocking the rays of the sun from the portions it covered and leaving a light impression of its form.<p>Plants were often the subject of Talbot's early photographs, for he was a serious amateur botanist and envisioned the accurate recording of specimens as an important application of his invention. The "Album di disegni fotogenici," in which this print appears, contains thirty-six images sent by Talbot to the Italian botanist Antonio Bertolon