Survey 4: The First Shot Ever

Today, photography can be used to capture a memory. This is all thanks to Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, a French inventor who used the process of heliography to create the world’s first permanent photographic image.

Niépce’s View from the Window at Le Gras (1826 or 1827) is the earliest surviving photograph of a view of Niépce’s estate in Burgundy, France. It was made using a camera obscura. As heliography produces one-of-a-kind images, there are no duplicates of the piece. Niépce used a very small camera of his own making and a pinhole acting as the lens. He coated Bitumen of Judea onto a piece of glass or metal; the Bitumen then hardened in proportion to the amount of light that hit it. The exposure took at least eight hours. Eight whole hours! Niépce’s patience and dedication amazes me! Obviously, the photo is very low quality and difficult to see. The grayish-hued plate containing hardened bitumen looks like a blur. During the exposure, different areas of the bitumen had hardened by different amounts, and the chemical wash removed some of the coating more than in other areas, leaving the image behind.

When the picture was taken, he fixed the image with lavender oil and white petroleum. He then created enhanced versions of the photo which is much easier to see. If you look at the photograph carefully, you can observe the results of the very long exposure. Both the building wing on the left and the one on the right were illuminated. The colours are showing up more in the enhanced photo and in the black and white one, the contrast is very obvious so we’re able to clearly see the buildings.

It truly is a revolutionary invention that not many people know about. The first photograph is now sealed in an oxygen-free case at the Harry Ransom Center in Austin. I hope I’ll be able to see it with my own eyes someday.