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The First Photograph

Posted on Monday 15 December 2003 to Visions and Illusions

Update: Based on a discussion over at Languagehat, I have altered the spelling of Ni?pce to Ni?pce.

I have a fascination with old photographs, the older the better. So it stands to reason (by this admittedly pretty simple-minded critereon) that this would be one of my favourites.

It's not what you might call a conventional beauty. Being fuzzy and poorly defined, any beauty that it may contain is definitely of the more austere variety. Also its subject matter is somewhat mundane. Nevertheless, it still has a number interesting aspects about it, some better known than others.

This is the world's oldest photograph. The year is 1826 and it is the view from an upper-storey window over the roofs of some buildings. This is the first permanent recording of an image by camera obscura. It's also the only photograph we have from this particular decade of the nineteeth century, the invention of photography wouldn't be officially announced by Daguerre for another ten years.

The scene depicted is a rural one, it is the courtyard of a country estate in post-Napoleonic France, Napoleon himself having died on St Helena only 5 years earlier. The photographer, Joseph Nic?phore Ni?pce, was a veteran soldier of the French Revolution who had joined the National Guard in 1788 and served under Napoleon during his campaigns in the South of France and Sardinia. Many years later, his son Isidore also saw action with Napoleon, this time at Waterloo.

Ni?pce took the photograph from the upper-storey of his estate Le Gras in the village of St.-Loup-des-Varennes in Burgundy. Though indistinct, it is possible to make out the panes of Ni?pce's workroom windows to the left and right of the picture. Through the window one can see a courtyard and the rooftops of various buildings on the property: the upper loft of the granary, the slanting roof of the barn and, on the right, another wing of the family house. In the distance and to the left is a pear tree and on the right and almost in-line with the horizon is the roof and chimney of the bakery.

?I have the satisfaction of being able to tell you that through an improvement in my process I have succeeded in obtaining a picture which is as good as I could wish.... It was taken from your room at Le Gras with my biggest camera and my largest stone. The objects appear with astonishing sharpness and exactitude down to the smallest details and finest gradations. As the image is almost colorless, one can judge it only by holding the stone at an angle, and I can tell you the effect is downright magical.?
-- Joseph Nic?phore Ni?pce?s letter to his brother, Claude, describing the results of his first successful experiment in 1824.

The Ni?pces were talented inventors. Joseph Nic?phore and his older brother Claude invented the first recognisable internal combustion engine, a prototype of which they used to power a boat on the river Seine. The brothers held a patent to this invention, a document which bore the signature of the Emperor Napoleon. But given that it was still just the dawn of the Steam Age, perhaps it was inevitable that they would fail to make a commercial success out of it. While Claude continued to work on refining the engine, Joseph Nic?phore started working on other projects.

Although Ni?pce had experimented with silver nitrate, which is the chemical basis of all later photography, he was unable to make the the images permanent. That is, he couldn't prevent them from eventually turning completely black from exposure to light. Instead, Ni?pce took a different approach and ended up inventing photo-lithography, a process that is still in use to this day.

In lithography (literally "stone writing"), a slab of polished fine grained limestone is used which has an image applied to it with a greasy substance such as with a wax pencil. The stone was then dampened with water and then applied with ink. The ink is repelled by the water but adheres to the greasy material and can then be used to transfer multiple copies of the image to paper. An alternative process uses a metal plate and where bitumen is used to protect certain regions of it. The plate is then placed into an etching solution which dissolves away part of the the exposed surface and leaves a series of pits. Finally the remaining bitumen is removed and once again water and ink are applied, the ink is then repelled by the water on the smooth parts and attaches to the pitted parts.

Ni?pce learnt that he could transfer paper drawings directly to a printer's plate by coating it with a mixture of lavender oil and Bitumen of Judea or more colloquially known as "Jew's Pitch". This naturally occurring substance was so called because it was a petrochemical product that was found in the Middle East, nevertheless Ni?pce had a source of it close to home in Burgundy. The bitumen was known to have the property that when exposed to sunlight it would change its colour and go hard. Ni?pce would place the picture to be transferred over a bitumen coated plate and then leave it in sunlight for several hours. After exposing the plate in this fashion he found that he could wash away the regions which hadn't hardened (those parts which had been shaded by the black line of the image above) with a mixture of lavender oil and and white petroleum. The result was a negative image on the plate.

Ni?pce named his techique heliography in honour of the sun's special role in the process.

He then applied the technique to photographing scenes from nature by placing bitumen coated plates inside a camera obscura. These devices had been commonly used as drawing aids since the 16th century although they were based on principles that had been first investigated in China two thousand years earlier that (the term was first used by Johannes Kepler in 1600). Ni?pce was not the first person to try to record the image of a camera obscura, experiments had been performed various people including well known inventors and scientists such as James Watt, Thomas Wedgwood and Humphry Davy however none of them had succeeded in producing a permanent image. For example, Davy wrote:

What is needed is to somehow prevent the light parts of the drawing being affected by daylight. If this were achieved, the process would be as useful as it is straightforward. Up until now you have to keep the copy of the drawing in a dark place. This drawing can only be viewed in the dark and for a short time. I have tried in vain all possible means to prevent the colorless parts from going black with light.

As for the images produced by the camera obscura, undoubtedly they did not get enough light for me to obtain a clear drawing with the silver nitrate. Nonetheless this is where the research interest lies. But all attempts have been useless.

Ni?pce's photo-lithographic process produced a very durable image, a characteristic that was to prove to be very helpful in its later history. One problem however was that the image produced was still negative, i.e. hardened bitumen remained in regions where the sunlight was brightest but he had found a way to view to image in the positive by ensuring that the bitumen was laid over a polished pewter surface. By holding the plate at just the right angle, the background could be made to go dark while light reflected off the bitumen making it look bright.

Another problem was the low light-sensitivity of the bitumen medium meant that exposures needed to take a very long time indeed. It is often said that the Ni?pce image took 8 hours to produce because it is possible to see both morning and evening shadows in the image. This certainly gives the illumination of the image a strange quality to be sure but investigations which have attempted reproduce his techniques as accurately as possible have showed that the exposure may have been even longer with estimates of between 3 and 5 days. Obviously exposure times like this would greatly limit the potential subject matter of this kind of photography. Ni?pce spent the rest of his life investigating alternatives and after the death of his brother, he formed a partnership with Louis Jacques Mand? Daguerre, the man who eventually hit upon a way to reduce the time of an exposure down to only a few minutes in bright sunshine. Daguerre had found a way to amplify an underexposed image using a process we now refer to as "developing" the image.

Whilst Daguerre later credited the important contribution of his former partner, who died of a sudden stroke in 1833, he never acknowledged the existence of Ni?pce's first photograph even though it is known that Ni?pce had sent him one in 1829. For various reasons, some understandable and others due purely to vanity, Daguerre reserved for himself the glory of being called the "Father of Photography" by announcing his invention of the "Daguerreotype" in 1839.

From the work of Daguerre, which was published several years later, it appears that Ni?pce was the fast who obtained a permanent sun-picture; to him we are indebted for the, first idea of a fixing material; it was he who first employed silver and the vapor of iodine. The process of Ni?pce had been so far perfected as to admit the use of the camera, which, by reason of the want of sensitiveness in the materials used; had remained a useless optical arrangement. Ni?pce, in his experiments, discarded the use of the silver salts, and substituted in their place a resinous substance denominated the 11 Bitumen of Judea." He named his process "Heliography," or " Sun-drawing." His pictures were produced by coating a metal plate with the resinous substance above alluded to, and then exposing this plate, under a picture on glass, or in the camera, for several hours in front of the object to be copied. By this exposure to light the parts of the bitumen which had been acted upon by the rays underwent a change according to the actinic intensity, whereby they became insoluble in certain essential oils. By treatment afterward with these essences, as, for instance, the oil of lavender, the picture was developed, the shadows being formed by the brilliant surface of the metal exposed, by the solvent action of the essential oil in those parts of the resin on which the rays of light had not impinged; whilst the lights were represented by the thin film of bitumen which had become altered and insoluble in the oleaginous substance employed in fixing. Some of the specimens produced by this method at this period exist still in the British Museum; some of them are in the form of etchings, having been acted upon probably by the galvanic current. It is evident that Ni?pce was acquainted with a method of fixing his sun-drawings; but his successes were limited to productions which now would be regarded very trivial and unsatisfactory.

--- John Towler, The Silver Sunbeam 1864

Fortunately, but with no thanks to Daguerre, a single example of Ni?pce's photograph survived in private hands for a hundred and thirty years and actually went completely missing for the last fifty four of them. Joseph Nic?phore Ni?pce's brother Claude had moved to England in the hope of further developing their internal combustion engine but by 1827 he fell gravely ill so Ni?pce made the trip across the channel to see him. Amongst his items of luggage was the first photograph.

While in London, Ni?pce had made contact with the Royal Society and presented his technique for taking images but, going against the ethos of the society of amateur gentlemen scientists, the inventor Ni?pce refused to divulge all of the details of his process. Consequently, they returned his paper and examples without recognising his achievement. Ni?pce presented his photograph to Francis Bauer, the Fellow of the Royal Society who suggested he present there and returned to France. His brother died a few weeks later.

From there the photograph passed through several hands and was last seen in public in 1898 at an exhibition at the Crystal Palace in London. It was only after considerable effort and detective work that the image was rediscovered by Helmut and Alison Gernsheim in 1952.

A year and a half passed. We were in the middle of preparations for the historical section of the World Exhibition of Photography in Lucerne, Switzerland, when one day my wife came running to me in great excitement, holding a piece of paper in the air, like Chamberlain in 1938, and shouted in triumph: ??The Ni?pce?s photographs have been found,? writes Mrs. Pritchard.? Dumbfounded I read that her husband had died some months before. Going through his estate, a big trunk that had been in a London depository since 1917 had to be opened. Among old clothes, books and other family relics belonging to his mother (who had died in 1917) Mrs. Pritchard had found the Ni?pce items I had been searching for. She regretted to have to tell me that the picture had completely faded. There was nothing to be seen.

Impatient to see the treasure trove for myself, for I knew that a bitumen picture could not fade, I telephoned to inquire when I could come. A lady companion answered that Mrs. Pritchard was in bed with a cold, but would write to me as soon as she was well again. A month passed. At last came the day which I shall never forget: 14 February 1952....

During lunch I had to tell the ladies about my collection, how I found the [Lewis] Carroll albums, and what had given me the idea to search for the Ni?pce pictures. They expressed interest in my books, which I said I would send. We chatted about our forthcoming exhibition in Lucerne, and I promised to take greetings to a relation, director of the leading hotel there. Meanwhile coffee was served in the sitting room and the great moment could not be far off, when Sherlock Holmes II would at last be allowed to inspect the treasure he had been trailing for six years. Reading my thoughts Mrs. Pritchard got up, handed me a handsome mirror in a broad gold frame and said ?That?s it. You will be disappointed, but I had warned you that there was nothing left of a picture.?

I was startled. I had not expected a looking glass, nor an Empire frame in which the pewter plate lay like a painting. I went to the window, held the plate at an angle to the light, as one does with daguerreotypes. No image was to be seen. Then I increased the angle--and suddenly the entire courtyard scene unfolded itself in front of my eyes. The ladies were speechless. Was I practicing black magic on them? Then I turned the picture and read Francis Bauer?s French and English inscription: ?Monsieur Ni?pce?s first successful experiment of fixing permanently the image from Nature,? and the date below, 1827. Only a historian can understand my feeling at that moment. I had reached the goal of my research and held the foundation stone of photography in my hand. I felt myself in communication with Ni?pce. ?Your nightmare existence in a trunk is over,? I thought. ?[George] Potonni?e was right. At long last you will be recognized as the inventor of photography. This picture will prove it to all the world.?

Addressing the ladies I said: ?This find is of the utmost importance for photography. It proves Ni?pce to have been the inventor, advances the date of the invention from 1839 to 1826, and, last but not least, establishes the correct subject. It shows the courtyard of Ni?pce?s country house, as I predicted nearly two years ago. May I have your permission to take these three incunabula with me, and reproduce them for my intended publication? For 125 years these vital documents had been in Britain, but not one of the former owners had taken the trouble to investigate them.? ?A splendid idea,? replied Mrs. Pritchard, ?but tell me why did you mention 1826 as the date of the heliograph when the label says 1827?? I explained that 1827 was the date of presentation to the Royal Society, and the handwriting that of Bauer, not Ni?pce?s. ?If the picture was taken on a pewter plate, which has still to be established, the date is almost certainly 1826. For in that year Ni?pce had bought his first professional camera and pewter plates. He was anxious to try them out, and why should he have waited for a year before making an experiment? Moreover, we know that his best reproduction ever, the Cardinal, was taken in 1826 on a pewter plate, and so I see no reason to assume that this view was made later.?

Anticipation of my triumph as a historian brought me back with a jolt to my dilemma as a collector. The die was not yet cast. Remembering the lady companion?s remark during the drive, and the favorable impression the examination had obviously left behind, I asked Mrs. Pritchard point blank: ?What will happen to this treasure trove after my publication? For 54 years it was lost sight of. Don't you think they should now enter a photographic collection and be secured there for posterity? You have read of my attempts to form a National Collection. That of the Royal [Photographic Society] is not open to the public, and from my experience as a member--I am a Fellow--I am aware of their difficulties to find anything I want to see. I intend to arrange an exhibition every year in a different country. How wonderful it would be to start it with Ni?pce. Daguerre and Talbot are already represented.? I paused for a possible reaction. In the absence of a remark I continued: ?Gutenberg?s monument of printing, the 42-line Bible, exists in at least six copies. This first photograph is unique. It must not get lost again.? My comparison with Gutenberg startled her to inquire: ?How much do you think the photograph is worth?? ?Priceless,? I replied. ?Whatever sum I might name you, after my publication someone will probably offer you more. Or, if not then, in ten or twenty years? time. But, if you take this picture tomorrow to any picture dealer you know, he will offer you ten shillings for the frame and throw the plate away. Like you, he will say: ?I am afraid this is only a mirror. I can't offer this to anyone as a photographic picture, madam. Not even Mr. Gernsheim would buy it.?? Turning to her friend, Mrs. Pritchard said: ?I think Mr. Gernsheim has a good point there, don?t you think?,? and then to me: ?You have pleaded the cause very well. I am sure no one could look after these historic items better than yourself. You shall have them.?

That evening my wife and I celebrated the event. It is not always that research leads one to the goal, and ours had been royally rewarded....

May I conclude on a personal note. Museums and other public institutions often turn gifts into cash when it suits them. I wanted to avoid anyone saying the same of me. So I passed my priceless Ni?pce items on to the University of Texas as I had received them, without valuation, when the Gernsheim Collection was acquired by that institution in 1964.

And so Ni?pce and his photograph have finally gained the recognition they deserved and the photograph itself has inevitably become something of a cultural icon, gracing the first chapter of many textbooks on photography as well as being a popular search term for Google requests. There is a final twist to the story, however, which is that the most commonly reproduced version of this image (the one shown above) has been heavily doctored and is in fact not a very accurate representation of the original heliograph. This image has been carefully reconstructed from several images (both positive and negative) in order to clearly show as many details as possible. The composite image was then touched up by hand with watercolours by Helmet Gernsheim himself. Gernsheim had tried to bring the photograph as close as possible to how he felt the original should appear however it would be hard to argue that this is a true or accurate reflection of the original picture. It really should be seen as more an explanatory sketch to help the viewer understand the original.

Recently the image has undergone a refurbishment by its curators at the Harry Ranson Center at the University of Texas. As part of the process of rehousing the picture in a new oxygen-free case as well as the very first comprehensive scientific analysis of the the image, the museum has issued a new official image of the View from the Window at Le Gras which more accurately shows how the image actually looks. I have to say that from an aesthetic point of the view the image is disappointing and I'm sure the ghost of Helmet Gernsheim is far from pleased with it but the image does have some advantages, despite being extremely faint certain details are show up better in the new image that the Gernsheim one.

I can't help but think that they could have done a little better but perhaps there's no really ideal way to view the Ni?pce photograph other than to stand in front of it in person and then crane your neck.

The Getty work also confirmed the best way to display the heliograph: in a dark room with only a single source of light. Even so, visitors to the Ransom Center will need to walk up to the photo and move around to catch a good glimpse of it, says Flukinger. When the image does pop out at the viewer, "it is somewhat magic," he says.

Drawing by Helmut Gernsheim of
Joseph Nic?phore Ni?pce?s
View from the Window at Le Gras

Helmut Gernsheim & Kodak Research Laboratory
Reproduction of Joseph Nic?phore Ni?pce?s
View from the Window at Le Gras
March 21, 1952

Kodak Research Laboratory
Reproduction of Joseph Nic?phore Ni?pce?s
View from the Window at Le Gras
March 20, 1952

New official image of the First Photograph in 2003, minus any manual retouching. Joseph Nic?phore Ni?pce's View from the Window at Le Gras. c. 1826. Gernsheim Collection Harry Ransom Center / University of Texas at Austin. Photo by J. Paul Getty Museum.

Joseph Nic?phore Ni?pce
View from the Window at Le Gras
1826

A computer reconstruction of the view from the window at Le Gras on a summer's day in 1826.