The Pencil of Nature

This project is an exercise of appropriation beginning with its title: it takes the name that Henry William Fox Talbot gave to his photography publication (1844), where he declared that the human hand had no interference in the documentation of nature. In this series, Venegas reviews female poses when photographed by men putting her own influences in crisis and depicting male poses in the form of self-portraits from celebrated artworks.

In this way, the volume questions the traditional link between gender and nature by highlighting the plasticity of bodies in front of the camera, subject to light and movement. As in the images of Talbot that fade, by accepting our constant transformation, we find the possibility of understanding what we comprehend as other. In this monograph, Venegas traces the very origins of photography following Henry William Fox Talbot and its relationship to documentation.

The Pencil of Nature raises contemporary debates on the relationship between gender and nature.