"During one of the first days of the month of October 1833, I was amusing myself (at the Villa Melzi) on the lovely shores of the Lake of Como in Italy, taking sketches with Wollaston's Camera Lucida, or rather I should say, attempting to take them, but with the smallest possible amount of success. For when the eye was removed from the prism - in which all looked beautiful - I found that the faithless pencil had only left traces on the paper melancholy to behold…the idea occurred to me...how charming it would be if it were possible to cause these natural images to imprint themselves durably, and remain fixed upon the paper! And why should it not be possible? I asked myself."

It occurred to me that this little description of the intellectual birth of photography proposed a suitable excuse for an adventure. I would travel to the Lake Como region with copies of Henry Fox-Talbot’s sketches and, standing before the same muse, reproduce identical scenes to those he’d attempted to capture with his Camera Lucida. Only, I wouldn’t use pencil and paper – I too posses little knowledge of drawing -  but instead use my lensless pinhole camera, a similar model to the one Fox-Talbot first experimented with whilst inventing positive/negative photography soon after he’d returned from Lake Como to England, one hundred and seventy-five years ago.

Alongside my pinhole camera, tripod, dark bag and 60 squares of blank photographic paper I packed a copy of ‘Baedekers guide to North Italy’, 1913 edition, as I’d been told that the pre first world war Baedeker guides, if you can get your hands on them, are the best available in their descriptions of the older touristic monuments. I supposed the book to be rather outdated regarding hotel and restaurant information but thought it might be interesting to see how much the area had changed since publication (not much as it panned out, the maps were incredibly accurate and most hotels listed were still in operation).

The grounds of the Villa Melzi - bright with rhododendron in bloom – were little frequented as I worked throughout the morning. Just a handful of foreign retirees wearing the clothes of teenagers – baseball caps, brightly coloured shorts and sports shirts – and concerned frowns looked on, comparing their digital machines to my wooden pinhole box like inadequate men in a public toilet. I understood their pinhole-envy. With its lack of viewfinder and exposure meter my camera’s operation is challenging enough to retain ones interest yet the image-making process slow and social enough to keep the machine true to photography’s origin as a form of gentle relaxation. In short, the pinhole is the real thing.

I made four images with different guessed exposure times for every one of Fox-Talbot’s sketched views; I didn’t plan to develop the images until I was back in England so I wanted to try to ensure I had at least one good exposure of each scene. Little had changed here it seemed since Fox-Talbot visited. Looking south there was a new ornamental pool - bedecked in white lily - and several additional trees complimenting the lake view but otherwise the balustrades of the Villa were as they were and the wide slash of white rock that bisects Monte Cresone and features so strongly in Fox-Talbot’s first sketch remained stark and clear of vegetation.

At midday I walked back to the village of Bellagio and hunted for transport across the lake towards Monte Cresone and the Villa Carlotta. Baedeker advised the traveller to take a rowboat.

‘Bellagio to Villa Melzi, Villa Carlotta and back, each rower three francs,’ it stated. ‘One rower suffices, unless the traveller is pressed for time; a second may be dismissed with the words ‘Basta uno!’ The traveller should insist on seeing the tariff before embarking.’

There were no rowboats in sight so I boarded a ferry staffed by cheery men who, like all locals I‘d encountered since I’d arrived, were impressively relaxed and friendly. I took care to view the tariff; it informed me that the ten minute ride was hugely expensive. I shrugged the cost off. If you worried about money in the Como region you’d go grey overnight. I did however check my change carefully, having been warned by Baedeker that ‘‘mistakes’ are sometimes made by the ticket-clerks’.

Leaning on my Bellagio hotel window-sill I watched, in a trench between the terracotta roofs, two old men utter leisurely greetings as they passed on a steep cobbled alley. Swifts swarmed among the peeling church bells and voices of ferrymen and drew my eyes to the distant peninsulas, snowy peaks and ravines that defined the landscape. A car ferry rumbled into port, its wake tossing two polished teak boats about on their moorings. It all looked so perfect, as if Leonardo himself had placed each component there; I made a few hurried pinhole exposures before Monte Cresone swallowed the sun entirely and the air turned an ethereal blue.

The pinhole camera worked its usual magic throughout the next morning. It’s just a wooden box yet it somehow managed to announce it’s pedigree to the world. It’s a camera. The first camera. The camera that, even if you consider its output old fashioned and irrelevant, you have little choice but to feel affection and respect for. At lunchtime I was approached by the latest of the mornings’ fellow photography lovers who, even though we couldn’t speak the same language, indulged in a little gentle and pleasant communication. He’d learnt this type of photography at school, he mimed, it’s a lovely process, dignified, how nice that it’s still being done this way. It’s just a box, yes? Yes, I replied, and so we went on. It’s an added bonus to the pinhole process, this civilised interaction with perfect strangers, and one that makes the hobby all the more enjoyable.

Baedeker advised that the journey from Bellagio to Como Town by lake-steamer took one and three quarter hours. Ninety-five years on from the guide’s publication the journey by diesel-powered ship, not steam, took a quarter hour more. The two hours were a pleasure though, with delightful scenery – steep forested mountains, isolated terracotta tiled houses clustered around glinting bell-towers – and a jolly ticket collector who paced excitedly around the upper decks shouting whenever a villa of a famous person came into view,

‘George Clooney, here, here!’ (mention of Clooney’s name drew a prolonged blast on the ships horn from the captain and a sigh from the local mothers onboard) ‘Versace, Versace, there, there!’

I spent the next three days wandering the narrow alleys of the old town, enjoying my pinhole photography at a very slow pace. I’d no more of Fox-Talbots’ scenes to recreate so I just focused on what I thought he might have photographed if he could have done, taking my influence from the classical style of his sketches and his renowned love and respect for the natural world.

The funicular railway to the village of Brunate, its track tracing a diagonal scar across the green mountainside, was seven minutes quicker from bottom to top than Baedeker reported it to be. From the viewpoint tower LakeComo had the appearance of a steep Norwegian Fjord. The snowy Swiss Alps at the head of the valley were clear, as were the church-bells echoing from the many small hamlets that dotted the wooded slopes. Seaplanes swooped, following the curve of the lake, and hawks circled. All was peaceful.

Baedeker has the following to say regarding Italian border customs.

‘Customs are generally lenient. Tobacco, cigars, playing cards and matches are the articles chiefly sought for. There is no duty on cameras or photographic plates...’ 

‘Non, this, non, non,’ ordered a Milan airport x-ray security guard, his polished brown head jutting from a too-tight shirt, his angry finger pointing at my tripod.

‘It’s only a camera tripod,’ I said. He shrugged and looked away into empty space.

‘It cost two hundred pounds,’ I explained, ‘and the check in desk has just closed. If I don’t take it on board, I’ll have to leave it here.’ More shrugging from the macho thug.

The tripod had sailed through customs at Rome, Pisa, Madrid, Porto, London, Bangkok and Abu Dhabi during the last year but I didn’t argue with the guard because airport staff can do as they like nowadays and if you dare stand up for yourself you’re likely to be labelled a terrorist. How long before we’re all led to our planes in handcuffs and anybody who objects will be faced with brainwashed ordinary citizens asking,

‘Well, why don’t you want to be handcuffed, do you want to attack the pilot or something? If you’ve nothing to hide, why are you complaining?’

I left the tripod in the care of an embarrassed girl at the closed check in desk, saying

‘It’s a good tripod, if any of your family enjoy photography, they’ll appreciate it,’ and looked around the duty free. It was an arsenal for real would-be terrorists. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that a man with a couple of bottles of brandy and a box of matches could do far more damage than a photographer with a tripod, or to work out why airports committed more to protecting their shareholders than their customers continue to sell inflammable alcohol in glass bottles…Such a shame; a very modern, vulgar end to an otherwise wonderfully timeless adventure.

You can buy Dave's book, 'At The Villa Melzi', featuring the pinhole photographs of this journey, in the online shop Here

In Bellagio Dave stayed at the Hotel Belaggio  -  www.hotelbellagio.it

In Como Dave stayed at the Hotel Metropole Suisse  -  www.hotelmetropolesuisse.com