Sometimes it’s hard to think back to where the original idea for a book first came from but for The Illusions, I remember having a somewhat lofty aspiration to write about technology and how it affects us. I was thinking a lot about how social media is a sort of gigantic human experiment, and I wanted to explore that notion through a historical lens. So I started looking at earlier technologies that changed the way we view ourselves and the world around us. I’ve always been interested in photography and so I started to delve into the lives of two photographic pioneers, Henry Fox Talbot and Louis Daguerre, both fascinating fellas, but I couldn’t help feeling that something was missing.
A chance conversation with a close friend cleared it up for me. ‘I know you like photography,’ she said. ‘But why don’t you look at early film? I’m sure there were women involved in the really early days and you really love film.’ Obviously, being a prize fool,
