Photography is something that most of us innately associate with the modern world in all its texture, but the medium has by now become quite ancient.
As of September 16th, 2024 this artistic, commercial, personal and academic medium for so much creation supposedly turned 200, as celebrated since the day on which the first ever known photograph was reportedly taken in 1824.
As the French photography journal Réponses Photo explains in its latest issue, tackling what’s actually a highly debated subject,
“On September 16, 1824, Nicéphore Niépce wrote to his brother that he had succeeded for the first time in fixing an image, and this, after years of experiments. While the main celebrations of the bicentennial will surely be scheduled for 2026-2027 and there is still debate among historians on the date to remember, we are well and truly entering the 200 years of reign of our medium, still so young compared to other practices.”
Several years prior to 1824, Niépce had picked up the practice of experiments first realized in the 18th century for capturing light onto a surface to reproduce an image.
At the same time as he was doing this work, other curious individuals in other European countries were also doing similar experiments. Among these was the English scientist John Herschel, who later ended up inventing cyanotype in 1842.
Herschel is also the recognized inventor of the word “photography” itself, as opposed to Niépce’s word for the same thing, “heliography”, essentially meaning to write with the sun. (in my opinion, a much more beautiful word, had it been used instead of “photography.”)
After continued experimentation, it was Niépce who finally came upon a mix of chemicals, equipment and processes to develop what he described in letters to his brother as his first successful photograph, or heliograph if you like.
However, the date on which he created this first successful image was never clearly defined.
Furthermore, Niépce created several other images previously which upon historical inspection were found to have been photo-etchings instead of photographs. He also encountered many obstacles and technical failures during his laborious process.
In some of these, Niépce was only able to create photo negatives of images while also often having his creations darken all over again if exposed to light.
Eventually, he turned to a natural asphalt-type substance called Bitumen of Judea. He would dissolve this with lavender oil solvent and apply the resulting mixture to lithographic stone, glass or metal, and then slowly expose the solution to projections from a camera obscura.
It was through experimentation with this process above that Niépce finally created what is now considered the world’s first photographically produced image.
In the above-mentioned correspondence with his brother, he attested to this, but the exact date upon which he’d had success could have been one of many between 1822 and 1827.
In an earlier article, Réponses Photo claims specifically,
‘On September 16, 1824, the very day that King Louis XVIII died, Nicéphore Niépce wrote to his brother: “With the help of the improvement of my processes, I have managed to obtain a point of view such as I could desire, and which I hardly dared to flatter myself with, because until then, I had only had very incomplete results. This point of view was taken from your room on the Gras side […] The image of the objects is represented there with astonishing clarity and fidelity, down to the smallest details, and with their most delicate nuances.”
However, the French publication references no specific evidence that this was the exact date on which Niépce wrote this letter. Nor is it known exactly what photo he was referring to.
Also, other sources reference other time frames for his earliest photographic success.
Before that, many of Niépce’s oldest experimental creations of early images were made onto surfaces that he would reuse or which weren’t known to have survived.
It was only with the creation of one that he titled Point de vue du Gras, or View from the Window at Le Gras, that a known permanent creation came into being.
The inventor himself, in an inscription added to the back of this photo, stated that it was made in 1827, and also later in the same year mentioned that it was “the first uncertain step in a completely new direction.”
This is what’s today known as the oldest known photograph.
The shot shows a scene outside a window, captured with a projection from a camera obscura onto a 16.2 cm × 20.2 cm (6.4 in × 8.0 in) pewter plate thinly coated with bitumen of Judea
Unfortunately though, if it really was captured in 1827, and was Niépce’s so-called first step in a new direction, it’s pretty implausible to set September 16 as the very specific date for the 200th anniversary of photography.
Thus, the 200th anniversary might have already come and gone, or it might still be on the way. There’s no way to be absolutely sure.
Even if Réponses Photo’s claim of a letter written on Sept 16, 1824, in particular, is precise, it would only be the date on which Nicéphore Niépce wrote of having made a durable photo, not necessarily the same date on which he created it.
In any case, based on modern attempts at reproducing his technique, the exposure process Niépce used would have probably required several days.
What’s more, from his letter, it’s hard to know which image he’s referring to, whether he managed to preserve it, or if it’s even possibly the specific photo titled View from the Window at Le Gras.
Ambiguity makes naming any specific date very hard and there are enough details about the timeline of Niépce’s experiments to make almost any time between 1822 and 1827 credible for his having created the first ever photo.
As for Point de vue du Gras, it went on to have its own mildly turbulent history.
After being put on public display several times throughout the 1800’s as a historical curiosity (yes even back then) this photograph fell into obscurity in 1905 and was lost for nearly half a century until being tracked down in 1952.
The historians who discovered the photo brought it back into prominence and worked to further reinforce the claim of Nicéphore Niépce as the inventor of photography. For years afterward, it was also the case that only heavily retouched copies of the photo were ever put on display.
A heavily retouched reproduction of Niépce’s original “heliograph”.
The original photographic plate was not only kept concealed but also suffered the disfigurement of its pewter, making it even harder to perceive the overlaid original image due to changes in light reflection.
View from the Window at Le Gras does however continues to hold a solid claim for being the oldest existing photo in the world.
Nonetheless, whether or not it was the successful reproduction that Nicéphore Niépce referred to in letters to his brother remains unknown, and so too does the specific date of its creation.
Thus, despite what Réponses Photo claims, we can’t be sure that photography celebrated its exact 200th birthday this week or even in this year.
Even now, the answer remains lost to the fading blur of history, quite literally in the case of Point de vue du Gras.
Images credit: Wikimedia Commons
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