"Singular Images, Failed Copies" explores early 19th-century England, focusing on the works of William Henry Fox Talbot, the pioneer of paper photography. Author Vered Maimon examines how photography was conceptualized during this transformative era, challenging the common association of early photography with the camera obscura. By analyzing philosophical and aesthetic premises, she highlights material, formal, and conceptual distinctions between these images. The book argues against the notion that Talbot's emphasis on "The Pencil of Nature" represented a purely mechanical shift, suggesting it signaled a deeper epistemological crisis in philosophical, scientific, and aesthetic thought during the 1830s and 1840s.
