As of today, photography is 195 years old. This is based on the date 1827 - when the first image was recorded on a light-sensitive medium. The medium was pewter, with the light-capturing material as a form of crude oil.

The idea of capturing light through other mediums is much older, dating back thousands of years to the Camera Obscura. Joseph Nicéphore Niépce took this idea and found the right mixture of chemicals to set the scenes in stone.

Cover photo by Mick Haupt

Andrew Seaman

A few countries raced to produce affordable pictures in the 19th century, especially England and France. Both were coming to the end of long periods, often decades, of necessary developments. The fields of Chemistry, Optics, and Visual arts, such as theory were essential in the creation of photography. If you were to look at modern analog photography, the same three fields are equally needed today.

Without these three areas, photography would've not been possible. If Joseph Nicéphore Niépce (1765–1833) hadn’t experimented as he did, the first image would have appeared much later. What allowed him to venture on was a curious mind and a competitive spirit. Being born into a prominent family also helped (his father was a lawyer and advisor to Louis XV).

In 1806, Joseph and his brother Claude were working towards a new type of internal combustible engine. While Claude pushed to sell the idea in England, Joseph concentrated on heliographic research – capturing photographic images on paper. The Camera Obscura was all the rage, but with one, small problem – the image was seen yet not captured.

Rodrigo Soares

The Camera Obscura (darkroom in Latin) was originally a physical room, absent of light, that allowed a view of the outside via a pin-sized hole. In the 18th century, inventors and artists developed the idea into a more mobile idea. A box that replicated the same process allowed them to draw or ‘trace’ the mirrored image of the subject. This early box became the basis of the camera as we understand it today, drawing a closer resemblance to large format cameras.

To create the image, Joseph tried Bitumen of Judea – a black substance derived from crude oil and thinned with the use of turpentine. This thick liquid was brushed on a pewter (metal alloy, mostly tin) plate. It was sensitive enough to record the basic outlines and shapes, yet not much else. In 1816, Joseph wrote to his brother that his experimentation had worked. The first photographic image had been recorded and been a success.

Then, experimentation would have been a slow and costly process – the family had almost 2M francs worth of debt. Nicéphore Niépce captured the first scene - a view from his studio window. Not only was the light-sensitive medium not efficient, but the captured light came through a pinhole. Judging by the technology, an image such as this would have taken days. The biggest issue was that the image was not fixed and continued to darken. Further experiments were necessary.

The image, Point de Vue du Gras by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce (1827) sits in the Gernsheim Collection since 1963 - Austin, Texas

Joseph called his experimentations ‘points de vue’ (viewpoints) and were not photographs, but héliographie, or 'sun writing.' He stuck with it, recording around 20 images in this manner before hitting on an improvement. By dissolving the light-sensitive bitumen in the oil lavender, he was able to fix the scene, and stop it from processing further.

In 1927, he inserted this plate into his camera obscura and positioned it. The famous scene was out of a window from his second-story workroom. After a few days' worth of exposure, a lasting impression of the courtyard, outbuildings, and trees was made. This was to become the official first photograph. The images created before were either lost, reused, or became black from over-exposure.

Writing about his process in the same year, Niépce saw the improvements he had made over the past decade. Although not perfect, he noted "the first uncertain step in a completely new direction." Two years after this image, he entered into a formal partnership with Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre. It was he who, after Joseph died in 1933, continued to carry the photography flame, creating the Daguerreotype.