8/17/2002: First photograph

I was a little surprised that I had never seen this before. This is the first photograph ever made, by a Frenchman, Joesph Niepce. It was made in 1827.

He took a certain varnish which hardened when exposed to light, exposed it to the scene, then washed away the non-hardened varnish areas, producing a layer of "negative".

Supposedly there's a building there on the left, a tree behind it, a barn in the foreground. The light hit these things for 8 hours while the varnish hardened, so it's not a single point light source.

UT, I have that pic too. But I found evidence that this was not the first such photograph. An earlier image, by the same photographer, recently sold for large at one of the major auction houses.



http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_497301.html

PARIS (March 21, 2002 7:47 p.m. EST) - The earliest recorded image taken by photographic means was auctioned at Sotheby's in Paris on Thursday for the equivalent of $443,220.

http://www.nandotimes.com/entertainm...-2711946c.html

I was tempted to post the earlier photograph in Quality Images

From what I've seen online, the one UT has posted is considered the first. Apparently, the one you linked to Nic is a copy of an engraving.

As between two photographs taken by the same photographer using the same techniques, it is absurd to argue that the photograph of a drawing is a "print" and that the first photograph of a scene of a building is the earliest photograhic image.

I guess it depends on which image one owns given the values at stake here!

The horsey shot is apparently a copy of a print, which for some reason doesn't count for some sources. In the shot I posted - which the Nando story says was 1826, not 1827 - one source said that it wasn't really a photograph, more of a lithograph, since it was produced using an etching/printing process. I guess they attach significance to the fact that it was the first time a shot of nature had been "taken" - a concept that hadn't previously been considered.

Bullshit.

It's a photograph of an etching.

That's still a photgraph taken by the same unique photgraphic technique as the later photograph by the same photographer.

Lithographic printing is something different.

What is it that we (as humans in general, not just posters to the Cellar) find so enlightening to point out others' faults and errors. I've even found myself guilty of this, especially here. We point out each others' speling errors, grammaticularness errors, and most importantly, the factual (yet mostly trivial) errors.
Is it the sense of self-worth, or the inflated ego that we crave?

The Treason of Images

La Trahison des Images, by Rene Magritte

Maggie, I didn't know you smoked.

The Rape, 1934, by Rene Magritte

Magritte

http://www.sixsixfive.com/439.html

See also:

this is not art.