<a href="http://jeanatacc.com/2011/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/1st-photo.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-3758" alt="1st photo" src="http://jeanatacc.com/2011/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/1st-photo.jpg" width="269" height="187" /></a>

<a href="http://viz.cwrl.utexas.edu/files/repr_0.jpg">http://viz.cwrl.utexas.edu/files/repr_0.jpg</a>

<!--more-->

&nbsp;

&nbsp;

<a name="bmTitlePageTitle"></a>"The First Photograph" Extra Credit

“View from the Window at Le Gras” by Joseph Nicephore Niepce (French, 1765-1833) Heliograph on pewter1826-1827. Because of its uniqueness and its significance to the arts and humanities, Joseph Nicephore first photograph is among the Ransoms Centers and indeed the worlds treasures. Taken by Niepce in either 1826-1827, the image depicts the view from an upstairs window at his estate, Le Gras, which is located in the Burgundy region of France. This single photographic plate represents the origin of today’s photography, film, and other media arts.

Niepce began his experiments with photography around1816, concurrently pursing two paths of exploration. He invented a new method of printmaking by copying engravings using only light and chemistry. Niepce also sought to capture direct views of nature by using the same process in combination with a camera obscura, an optical device used by artist as a drawing aid. After experimenting with paper, glass, and stone supports for various resins that hardened when exposed to light, Niepce began to use pewter plates in 1826. Sometime during that year or the next he coated his pewter plate with bitumen of Judea ( an asphalt derivative of petroleum) and loaded it into the camera obscura looking out the window of his second story workroom. After the exposure of at least eight hours, he removed the plate and washed it with a mixture of white petroleum and oil of lavender to dissolve the areas of bitumen that had not been hardened by the light. It produced the image we see today of the courtyard, trees, and the buildings of Niepce’s estate. Niepce called his invention “heliography,” or sun drawing.

In 1829 Niepce began a collaboration with the Parisian artist Louis-Jacques-Mande Daguerre to improve the process, but Niepce died in 1833 before it was completed. In 1839, after six more years of independent research and experimentation, Daguerre announced his improved photographic technique, the “daguerreotype.” Niepce’s role in photography’s invention was overshadowed by Daguerre and by the Englishman William Fox Talbot, who announced his own photographic process in 1839.

After a public display in an exhibition in London in 1898, Niepce’s heliograph lay in obscurity for over 50 years, forgotten by its owners. In 1952 the photography historian Helmut Gernsheim was able to establish the plate’s history and discover where descendants of the heliograph’s last owner had stored it. Through his subsequent publications, Gernsheim returned Niepce to his rightful place as the inventor of photography. When Harry Huntt Ransom purchased Gernsheim’s photography collection in 1963, Gernsheim donated Niepce’s heliograph. Today, view from the Window at Le Gras- the world’s earliest successful photograph from nature- is on permanent display at the Ransom Center.

In collaboration with the Ransom Center in 2002, the Getty Conservation Institute conducted the first scientific study of the heliograph’s material makeup, determined its state of conservation, and repaired the original gilt wood frame. The Getty Conservation Institute also designed and constructed a new protective case for the heliograph, which provides constant monitoring of its condition and environment. This was a great exhibit, I learned a lot about the beginning of photography.