Henry Fox Talbot was frustrated by fugitivity. He complained that his images were “fairy pictures, creations of a moment, and destined as rapidly to fade away.” And then, Sir John Herschel came to his rescue, and suggested he use sodium thiosulfate to remove the unexposed silver, and in doing so, gave us all the ability to fix our pictures. Thanks Sir John! Every time I use fixer I remind myself to try and not take it for granted, to remember what it is.

And for all his heroism in the fight against fugitivity, Hershel also invented an especially unfixable type of photograph, the anthotype. In 1841, he coated paper with the juice of flowers and then exposed a waxed engraving in contact with it to the sun for a few weeks. He made photographs through the action of sun fading the impermanent dyes. It’s really as simple as the color of curtains fading in a sunny window, or the way posters in shop windows eventually turn cyan. But of course, the process never became popular, since it fails to meet the primary criteria for a photograph, stability. Many of these anthotypes are still visible after 177 years, since they’ve been kept in the dark.

Here is “the best surviving specimen” in the collection of the Oxford Museum of the History of Science. It’s a Grecian lady looking at the moon, made of faded crimson poppy dye by Herschel in 1841.   Maybe this specimen is so well preserved because it was only viewed by moonlight. Is it significant to note that the digitization process, if only imperceptibly, compromised this object for the sake of visibility and accessibility?