With rarely seen images, this handsome, affordable volume shows Talbot's wide-ranging interests

This beautiful publication serves as a primer on the work of William Henry Fox Talbot, a true interdisciplinary innovator who drew on his knowledge of art, botany, chemistry and optics to become one of the inventors of photography in 1839. Talbot's "photogenic drawings" (photograms), calotypes and salted paper prints are some of the first-ever examples of images captured on paper.

Accompanying an exhibition at Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh opening in November...