A correspondent wrote to William Henry Fox Talbot in 1855 saying that photography was one of the great "poet ideas" of the century, and it is fair to say that this is how he saw it. This medium made a kind of union between man and visible reality, allowing us to look more deeply into all that surrounds us. He delighted to pore over his lilliputian images long after taking them, uncovering with a lens fresh details never seen before. The photographic image was more intricately coded than natural vision, because it held the data in suspension until you were ready to absorb it. We have grown used to the process, but for Talbot it retained its halo of the miraculous...
- Robert Harbison