The very first photograph. History of photography. The very first pictures. The oldest photograph of a woman

05.09.2023

“View from the window on Le Grace” - the photo was already a real one.

The original image on the plate looks very specific:

digitization

Niépce photographed the view from the window of his own house, and the shutter speed lasted for eight hours! The roofs of the nearest buildings and a piece of the yard - that's what you can see in this photo.

It was a picture of a table set for a picnic - 1829.

The Niepce method was not suitable for photographic portraits.

But French artist he succeeded in this - his method conveyed halftones well, and a shorter exposure allowed taking pictures of living people. Louis Daguerre collaborated with Niepce, but it took him a few more years after Niepce's death to bring the invention to perfection.

The first Daguerreotype was made in 1837 and represented

snapshot of Daguerre's art workshop

Daguerre. Boulevard du Temple 1838

(The world's first photograph with a person).

Church at Holyrood, Edinburgh, 1834

1839 - the first photographic portraits of people, women and men appeared.

On the left is American Dorothy Katherine Draper, whose picture, taken by a scientist brother, became the first photographic portrait within the United States and the first photographic portrait of a woman with open eyes.

The exposure lasted 65 seconds, Dorothy's face had to be covered with a thick layer of white powder.

And on the right is the Dutch chemist Robert Cornelius, who contrived to photograph himself.

His photographic portrait taken in October 1839 is the very first photograph

in history in general. Both of these experimental photographic portraits, in my opinion, look expressive and at ease, in contrast to later daguerreotypes, in which people often looked like idols due to excessive tension.

From the surviving daguerreotypes

The first erotic photograph taken by Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre in 1839.

An 1839 daguerreotype shows the Port of Ripetta in Italy. Pretty detailed image, however, in places the shadow ate everything into solid black.

And in this picture of Paris you can see the famous Louvre from the Seine River. All the same 1839. It's funny - many of the works of art exhibited in the Louvre and now considered ancient works of art had not yet been created at the time of the shooting.

Already in the first year of its existence, the daguerreotype preserved many traces of the past. The spread of the new technology was very intensive, surprisingly intensive for such an unusual novelty at that time. As early as 1839, people were already photographing things like museum collections, such as this collection of shells.

The next year came, 1840. Man has increasingly become a subject for photographs. This is the first photograph of a person in full growth (full-fledged, not a small, blurry silhouette). On it we can see with our own eyes an attribute of the life of the elite of the past, already at that time an old tradition - a personal carriage ready for a trip and a smart servant inviting passengers to take their seats. True, he does not invite us - we are a little late. Years for 170.

But in this photo of the same year - the family of the great Mozart. Although it has not been proven, there is a 90% chance that the elderly woman in the front row is Constance Mozart, the wife of the musician. Both this and the previous photographs allow us to at least get in touch with those times that already in 1840 were considered to be the deep past.

The idea immediately arises that daguerreotypes can convey to us some traces of an even older era - the 18th century. Who was the oldest of the people captured in the oldest photographs? Can we see the faces of people who lived most of their lives in the 18th century? Some people live up to 100 years and even more.

Daniel Waldo, born September 10, 1762, was related to US President John Adams. This man fought during the American Revolution, and in the photo we can see him at the age of 101 years.

Hugh Brady, illustrious American general, born July 29, 1768 - had the honor of fighting in the War of 1812.

And finally, one of the first white people born on the American continent - Konrad Heyer, who posed for a photographer back in 1852 at the age of 103! He served in the army under George Washington himself and participated in the Revolution. In the same eyes that we look into now, people from the era of the 17th century looked - from the 16xx!

1852 - the oldest person ever posed for a photographer by year of birth was photographed. Posed for a photographer at the age of 103!

Unlike Niepce, Louis Daguerre left a legacy to humanity and his own photographic portrait. Here he was such an imposing and handsome gentleman.

Moreover, thanks to his daguerreotype, a photograph of his competitor from England, William Henry Fox Talbot, has come down to us. 1844

Talbot invented a fundamentally different photography technology, much closer to the film cameras of the 20th century. He called it calotype - an unaesthetic name for a Russian-speaking person, but in Greek it means “beautiful imprint” (kalos-typos). You can use the name "talbotype". Common between calotypes and film cameras lies in the presence of an intermediate stage - the negative, due to which an unlimited number of photographs can be taken. Actually, the terms “positive”, “negative” and “photo” were coined by John Herschel under the impression of calotypes. Talbot's first successful experience dates back to 1835 - a picture of a window in the abbey in Lacock. Negative, positive and two modern photos for comparison.

In 1835, only the negative was made, Talbot finally figured out the production of positives only by 1839, presenting the calotype to the public almost simultaneously with the daguerreotype. Daguerreotypes were better in quality, much clearer than calotypes, but due to the possibility of copying, calotype still occupied its niche. In addition, it cannot be unequivocally stated that Talbot's images are ugly. For example, the water on them is much more alive than on daguerreotypes. Here, for example, Lake Catherine in Scotland - a snapshot of 1844.

The 19th century has dawned. In the 1840s, photography becomes available to all more or less wealthy families. And we, after almost two centuries, can see how ordinary people of that time looked and dressed.

An 1846 family photo of the Adams couple with their daughter. You can often find this photograph mentioned as posthumous, based on the child's posture. In fact, the girl is just sleeping, she lived until the 1880s.

Daguerreotypes are indeed very detailed, it is convenient to study the fashion of bygone decades from them. Anna Minerva Rogers Macomb was taken in 1850.

Balloons were the first devices for people to fly. The picture shows the landing of one of these balls in 1850 on the Persian square (now the territory of Iran).

Photography became more and more popular, the newly-minted photographers took not only prim portraits with starched faces, but also very lively scenes of the world around them. 1852 Anthony Falls.

But this photo of 1853 is, in my opinion, a masterpiece. It was photographed by Charles Negret on the rooftops of Notre Dame Cathedral, and the painter Henry Le Sec posed for him. Both belonged to the first generation of photographers.

The conscience of Russian literature, Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy - this is what he looked like in 1856. We will return to him later, and twice as much, because, despite the asceticism of this man and his closeness to ordinary people, advanced technologies were surprisingly persistently drawn to him, trying to capture his image.

There were new ways of taking pictures. Here is the 1856 ferrotype - a slightly blurry, but in its own way pleasant image, its soft halftones look more natural than the bold, clear contours of the daguerreotype.

Since photography appeared at the disposal of people, it means that at some time there must have been a desire to make changes to the resulting picture, combine two different images or distort them. 1858 is the year when the first photomontage was made. "Fading" - this is the name of this work, composed of five different negatives. It depicts a girl dying of tuberculosis. The composition is very emotional, however, I did not understand why there is a photomontage here. The same scene could have been done without him.

In the same year, the first aerial photograph was taken. To do this, it was necessary to attach a miniature camera to the legs of a tame bird. How helpless was the man then ...

Scene from the 60s… 1860s. Several people go on a trip on the only form of transport available in those years.

Baseball team "Brooklyn Excelsiors". Yes, America's favorite sport has a long history.

The first color photo - 1861.
Like most other experimental photographs, this image is not rich in content. A checkered ribbon from a Scottish outfit - that's the whole composition, with which the famous scientist James Clerk Maxwell decided to experiment. But she is colored. True, like the sound recordings of Leon Scott, experiments with color remained experiments, and it was necessary to wait a few more years before the regular receipt of color images from life.

By the way, the photo is the photographer himself.

They also tried to find a practical application for the photo. Guillaume Duchen, a French neurologist, used photography to present to the public his experiments on the nature of human facial expressions. By stimulating the facial muscles with electrodes, he achieved the reproduction of such expressions as joy or agony. His photo reports in 1862 became one of the first book photo illustrations that were not artistic, but scientific in nature.

Some of the old photographs look very unusual. Strong contrast and sharp outlines create the illusion that the lady is sitting in the middle of an entourage entirely carved from stone. 1860s.

In the 1860s, the real Japanese samurai were still in service. Not disguised actors, but samurai as they are. Soon after the photograph was taken, the samurai would be abolished as an estate.

Japanese ambassadors in Europe. 1860s. Fukuzawa Yukichi (second from left) acted as an English-Japanese translator.

Images of ordinary people have also been preserved, and not just representatives of high society. In the photo of the 1860s - a veteran of the American army with his wife.

As I mentioned, vintage photographs were often very clear and detailed. A fragment of a photographic portrait of Abraham Lincoln, taken in 1863 - close-up of his eyes. Taken as a whole, this photo seems to be an echo of something very far away, but when zoomed in, everything changes. A century and a half after the death of this man, his gaze still seems to me very alive and penetrating, as if I were standing in front of a living and healthy Lincoln.

A few more materials about the life of an outstanding person. Lincoln's first inauguration in 1861 - this photograph is strikingly different from most photographic materials of the 19th century. The cozy atmosphere of family photos in the midst of Victorian chambers and the monumentality of portraits of starched celebrities seem to be something long gone, while the seething crowd turns out to be much closer to the noisy everyday life of the 21st century.

Lincoln during the American Civil War, 1862. If you wish, you can find a lot of photographic materials about the war itself, filmed directly on the battlefield, in the barracks and during the transfer of troops.

Lincoln's second inauguration, 1864. The president himself can be seen in the center, holding a paper.

Civil War again - a tent serving as an Army local post office somewhere in Virginia, 1863.

Meanwhile, in England, everything is much calmer. 1864 Photographer Valentine Blancherd took a walk of the townsfolk along the King's Road in London.

Photo of the same year - actress Sarah Bernhardt poses for Paul Nadar. The look and style she chose for this photo is so neutral and timeless that the photo could be tagged 1980, 1990 or 2000 and almost no one could dispute that, as many photographers still shoot in black and white. .

The first color photograph - 1877.
But back to photography. It was time to shoot in color something more impressive than a piece of multi-colored rag. The Frenchman Ducos de Hauron tried to do this using the triple exposure method - that is, photographing the same scene three times through filters and combining different materials during development. He named his method heliochromia. This is what the town of Angouleme looked like in 1877:

The reproduction of colors in this picture is imperfect, for example, the blue color is almost completely absent. Many animals with dichromatic vision see the world in much the same way. Here is an option that I tried to make more realistic by adjusting the color balance.

And here is another option, perhaps the closest to how the photo looks without color correction. You can imagine that you are looking through a bright yellow glass, and then the effect of presence will be the strongest.

A lesser known photo by Oron. View of the city of Agen. In general, it looks rather strange - the color palette is completely different (bright blue), the date is also confusing - 1874, that is, this photograph claims to be older than the previous one, although it is the previous photograph that is considered the oldest surviving work of Oron. It is quite possible that only an imprint remained from the heliochromia of 1874, and the original is irretrievably lost.

Still life with a rooster - another Oron's heliochromia, made in 1879. It is difficult to judge what we see in this color photo - a shot of stuffed birds, or a photocopy of a hand-drawn picture. At least the color reproduction is impressive. And yet, it is not good enough to justify such a complex photographic process. Therefore, Oron's method did not become a mass method of color photography.

But black and white flourished. John Thompson was the kind of photographer who approached his work from an artistic point of view. He believed that smart and tidy intellectuals, prim members of royal families, stern generals and pompous politicians - this is not all that may be of interest to photography. There is another life. One of his most famous works, made in 1876 or 1877, is a photo of a tired beggar woman sitting in sadness by the porch. The work is called "Unfortunate - life on the streets of London."

Railways were the very first urban mode of transport, by 1887 they already had a fifty-year history. It was in this year that a photograph of the Minneapolis junction railway station was taken. As you can see, freight trains and the technogenic urban landscape are not very different from modern ones.

But the culture and ways of presenting it in those years were completely different. Radio and television, the Internet and multimedia libraries - all this will appear later, after many, many years. Until then, people, without leaving their homes, could only get verbal descriptions of the life, traditions and cultural objects of other countries from newspapers. The only way to get in touch with the culture of the whole world more deeply by seeing its artifacts with your own eyes is through travel and exhibitions, such as the World Exhibition, the grandest event of those times. Especially for the Exhibition, on the initiative of the Prince Consort of England, in the middle of the 19th century, the Crystal Palace was built - a structure made of metal and glass, huge even by the standards of modern shopping and entertainment centers. The exhibition ended, but the Crystal Palace remained, becoming a permanent place for the exposition of literally everything - from antiquities to the latest technical innovations. In the summer of 1888, in the huge concert hall of the Crystal Palace, the Handel Festival took place - a chic musical performance with the participation of hundreds of musicians and thousands of singers and singers. The collage of photographs shows the concert hall in various years of the Crystal Palace's existence up to its death in a conflagration in 1936.

Intercity passenger transportation 1889

Canals in Venice "Venetian Canal" (1894) by Alfred Stieglitz

A very lively shot... but something else was missing. What? Oh yes, colors. Color was still needed, and not as experiments, but as ....

Saint-Maxime, Lippmann_photo_view

Now photography is something ordinary for us, but in the 19th century we love, all this was for the first time.
Here is a small selection of first-of-its-kind photographs in various fields.

The very first photo - 1826.

The first photograph in history is considered to be the "View from the Window" photograph taken by the Frenchman Joseph Nicéphore Niepce in 1826 using a camera obscura on a tin plate covered with a thin layer of asphalt. Niépce used an eight-hour exposure to capture the image, placing a camera obscura on the windowsill of his family's country house.

The first photograph depicting another person - 1839.

This world's first photograph - "Boulevard du Temple", Paris Boulevard - with a person depicted on it was taken by the Frenchman Louis-Jacques Mande Daguerre (the man who invented the daguerreotype). The photo shows a busy street that appears to be deserted (exposure is 10 minutes and therefore no movement is visible), except for one person at the bottom left of the photo.

The world's first photomontage - 1856.

The first combined print was made by the Swede Oscar G. Reilander. He made a print, 31 by 16 inches, from thirty different negatives. The allegorical photograph "Two Ways of Life" is an ancient saga about the entry of two young people into life.
Rejlander's combined photographs, in which composed scenes and contrived poses were shot, were made from retouched negatives, with the necessary details drawn on the negatives, and unnecessary ones were removed.
Here I will allow myself to deviate a little from the topic. It was with Reilander that the Reverend Charles L. Dodgson, known to us as Lewis Carroll, studied, who subsequently took several unforgettable photographs, among which the photographs of children stand out, among them, of course, Alice Liddell - the prototype of the book's character. Here is a photograph of her taken by Carroll:

However, the more famous montage photograph is taken by Henry Peach Robinson in 1858. - "Dying" (or "Leaving"): an image created using five negatives.

The photo shows a young woman dying of consumption.

The first underwater photograph - 1856.

The first underwater photographs were taken by William Thompson in 1856 using a camera mounted on the bottom. There were seaweeds in the photos, and the photos themselves were of very poor quality and, unfortunately, all the footage from that year was lost.
But we can look at the photo of the first published underwater photograph of Louis Bhutan (c. 1890) and at the wonderful diving suit with a hard helmet:

The first aerial survey - 1858.
In 1858, Gaspard Felix Tournachon (better known as Nadar), a cartoonist, novelist and aeronaut, grabbed a camera in a balloon basket and took several pictures above Paris from above.
Nadar did not take his tripod shots as shown in this picture (by Honoré Daumier). He fixed his camera on the edge of the basket or pushed the lens through the bottom. Aerial photographs of Nadar have not survived to this day.

The earliest photo that has survived to this day was taken from the air by James Black in 1860, it captures the city of Boston:

The first color photograph - 1861.

This photo was taken by physicist James Clerk Maxwell. He captured the tartan strip with three different cameras with red, blue and yellow filters and then combined the images into one color composition.

The first photos of a moving object - 1872-78.

Photographs by Edward Muybridge. The first successful photographs of a moving horse along the Palo Alto track, San Francisco, June 19, 1878. Muybridge was developing a special apparatus that demonstrated movement in dynamics using a significant number of individual shots. The final impetus in its development was an experiment conducted in 1877. This experiment was originally not of a scientific nature, but merely an attempt to resolve a dispute between Governor Leland Stanford, who claimed that a horse lifts all 4 legs off the ground during a gallop, and his opponent, who insisted that at least one leg when running never leaves the ground. Muybridge has placed 12 cameras throughout the ride. During the race, the horse was in contact with the floor, the boards of which were connected to the shutter of the cameras. A series of photographs proved that during the gallop there are moments when all 4 hooves of the horse simultaneously leave the ground.
Muybridge's research and technical inventions later became a great contribution to the invention of cinema.

Various sources were used to prepare the material, including

FIRST
PHOTOS
IN THE WORLD
THE FIRST PHOTO IN THE WORLD:: 1826
[window view | photo clickable]
The first fixed image was made in 1822 by the Frenchman Joseph Nicéphore Niepce, but it has not survived to this day. Therefore, the first photograph in history is considered to be a “view from the window” photograph, obtained by Niepce in 1826 using a camera obscura on a tin plate covered with a thin layer of asphalt. The exposure lasted eight hours in bright sunlight. The advantage of Niépce's method was that the image was obtained in relief (after etching the asphalt), and it could easily be reproduced in any number of copies.

FIRST EROTIC PHOTO:: 1839
[ to see the whole erotic photo - click on it ]
FIRST PHOTO UNDERWATER:: 1856 (1890)
The first underwater photographs were taken by William Thomas in 1856. Unfortunately, all footage from that year has been lost. Below - first published underwater photograph (Louis Bhutan, 1890).
FIRST AERIAL PHOTO:: 1858 (1860)
In 1858, Gaspard Felix Tournachon, a cartoonist, grabbed a camera in a balloon basket and took several pictures from above of the French village of Petit-Becetre. However, time ruined these pictures. Now the earliest photo taken from the air is frame of 1860, on it is the city of Boston (USA).
FIRST COLOR PHOTO:: 1861
The first color photograph was taken by James Clerk Maxwell in 1861. Either the original quality of the photo, or an inept scan, but one way or another, it is difficult to make out what exactly the object is in the frame. However, while writing the post, I managed to find out that this is a Scottish tape.
Also early color photographs include:
[ 1877 Louis Ducos du Hauron, France | photo clickable]
[ 1909 Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky, Russian Empire | photo clickable]
THE FIRST PHOTO FROM SPACE:: 1946
This picture was taken in October 1946 in New Mexico. These days, we are used to colorful NASA images, video footage from Earth's orbit. And then, in 1946, when the war had just ended, it was an unprecedented miracle to see such a thing.
FIRST PICTURE OF THE EARTH:: 1968
FIRST PHOTO TAKEN ON ANOTHER PLANET:: 1975
In October 1975, the Venera-9 probe made a soft landing on Venus and took photographs.
FIRST PHOTO OF A PLANET OUTSIDE THE SOLAR SYSTEM:: 2005
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THE WORLD'S FIRST PHOTOS
[ first photo ever ] [ first erotic picture ] [ aerial photography ]
[first underwater shot] [first photo in space]
[first shot outside the solar system]

:: HERE::

Let's look at the very first photographs in the world.
An interesting collection of old, archival photographs.

One of the first recorded wedding photos in the world. 1840 February 10.
Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.

classical view of the Kremlin in 1852

the picture is interesting in that it captures the old Bolshoy Kamenny Bridge
buildings from the 17th century, which will be dismantled in 1857

view inside the Kremlin walls 1852

one of the most interesting pictures is the construction site of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in 1852.

Petersburg 1861

Saint Petersburg. St. Isaac's Cathedral, 1852

In St. Petersburg in 1853, the remarkable photographer Ivan Bianchi captured the Chain Bridge near the Summer Garden

Kyiv. View of St. Andrew's Church from Podil, 1852

Bruges (from which our trousers are named) has not changed much over the past 150 years. 1853

For the Roman Pantheon, which has stood safely for 2000 years, a century and a half is not a time at all! 1853

in Cologne, Germany, in 1853, they suddenly gathered to complete the construction of an abandoned one back in the 15th century after the first 200 years
construction of a giant cathedral - the most important unfinished building in Europe

Photo panorama of St. Petersburg 18617

Photo panorama of St. Petersburg 1861 6

Photo panorama of St. Petersburg 1861 5

Photo panorama of St. Petersburg 1861 4

Photo panorama of St. Petersburg 1861 3

Photo panorama of St. Petersburg 1861 2

Photo panorama of St. Petersburg 1861 1

Plaza de España in Rome since 1855 does not seem to have changed at all.
Gogol liked to walk here

Egypt. 1859

1854-55 can be appreciated from this work by Beato and Robertson, the view of the Ortakoy Mosque in Constantinople

Photograph of Balaklava, the main base of the British Expeditionary Force in the Crimea, taken by Roger Fenton in 1854-55.

Panorama of Moscow made on the occasion of the coronation of Alexander II in 1856. 6

Panorama of Moscow made on the occasion of the coronation of Alexander II in 1856. 5

Panorama of Moscow made on the occasion of the coronation of Alexander II in 1856. 4

Panorama of Moscow made on the occasion of the coronation of Alexander II in 1856. 3

Panorama of Moscow made on the occasion of the coronation of Alexander II in 1856. 2

Panorama of Moscow made on the occasion of the coronation of Alexander II in 1856. 1

Incredible Facts

When we think of old photographs, we think of black and white pictures first, but as these stunning photos prove, photo early 20th century, color photography was far more advanced than one might think.

Before 1907, if you wanted to get a color photograph, a professional colorist had to color it with various dyes and pigments.

However, the two French brothers Auguste and Louis Lumiere made a splash in photography. Using colored potato starch particles and a photosensitive emulsion, they were able to take color photographs without the need for additional coloring.

Despite the complexity of production, as well as the high cost, the process of making color photographs was very popular among photographers, and one of the world's first books on color photography was published using this particular technique.

First color photos

Thus, the brothers revolutionized the world of photography, later Kodak took photography to a whole new level by introducing Kodakchrome film to the market in 1935. It was a lighter and more convenient alternative to the invention of the Lumiere brothers. Their Autochrome Lumiere technology was immediately obsolete, but still remained popular in France until the 1950s.

Kodakchrome, in turn, has also become obsolete with the advent of digital photography. Kodak stopped making film in 2009. Today, digital photography is the most popular form of photography, but modern photography would not have been possible without the hard work of the pioneers Auguste and Louis Lumière.

Now let's see a collection of amazing photographs from a hundred years ago, made using the innovative technology of the Lumiere brothers.

1. Christina in red, 1913