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IN an abandoned house I found a family in photographs. A Victorian matriarch in jet beads and silk, a first world war soldier in a new uniform, seaside snaps, weddings, boxers, a child in a coffin. I could not understand how a family left its past behind, but I was fascinated by the technology 鈥� from silver salts on metal foil, to sepia tones and the glazed expressions that sitters were forced to adopt because the camera鈥檚 shutter had to remain open so long. Only later photographs taken by the family showed natural grins and grimaces.

In Laurie Dahlberg鈥檚 Victor Regnault and the Advance of Photography, you will find much to satisfy both curiosity about photography鈥檚 early technology and pleasure in his subjects. Regnault was a brilliant scientist, first a chemist, then an experimental physicist, then an industrialist. He experimented with photography in France during its earliest years, between 1830 and 1870. He produced a famous album that mixed images from portraits, landscapes, industrial scenes and scientific experiments.

Regnault clearly loved photography, so much so that he thought it 鈥渢he guiltiest of pleasures鈥�, and wrote letters of self-reproach about how he should have been working on his science rather than his photography. Among his innovations was a new developer, the use of a vacuum pump to make a better light-sensitive paper, and working out how to turn photographs into line illustrations 鈥� he was keen to add illustrations to his textbooks. Dahlberg shows us remarkable pictures of Regnault鈥檚 exploration of acoustics and other experiments. The man with vacuum pump (above) was photographed in 1851, a magical glimpse into a past laboratory.

There is another angle to his photography. Dahlberg points out that Regnault鈥檚 pictures of the countryside with its rich forests and rivers could have contributed to their industrial exploitation. As an influential scientist and director of the S猫vres porcelain works, his tranquil photographs may have reassured people that countryside would survive industry, suggests Dahlberg.

A fascinating book, it combines stunning images with a thoughtful biography.