8/17/2002: First photograph
 

http://cellar.org/2002/niepce.jpg

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/images/news/w...oto410x275.jpg

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.

Clearly, it is not the earliest photograph of a horse, given that it is a photograph of an etching of a horse, not of a real horse, but it's still an earlier photograph.

A photograph of another art piece, whether it's an etching or a sculpture is still a photograph, not a print.

It's not a photocopy, either.

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?

For me, it's a hobby. ;)

The Treason of Images
 

La Trahison des Images, by Rene Magritte

Maggie, I didn't know you smoked.

The Rape, 1934, by Rene Magritte

Useta. Not anymore.

O: "Do you smoke after intercourse?"
A: "Dunno, I never looked."

Was a lens used, or was it done by direct transfer?

Magritte
 

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

See also:

this is not art.

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

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

In the case of the image posted by UT, that is the plate itself, and in the case of the image posted by me, the image was made from a similar "photographic" plate created earlier. If we say that an image made from a photographic "negative" or "positive" image is not a photograph but a "print" of a "negative" then, I think we've all been calling prints "photographs" for centuries. What makes it a photograph is how the image is created.