This post is dedicated to all those who love photography : @jamtaylor , @shaka, @berniesanders , @blueorgy , @condra @mweich @dercoco @bebecitosfotos
What’s a photography and its significance? It’s something you can capture in time, it may be the face of a person, an animal, a beautiful place or even an simple object that got your attention. It’s beautiful to know that with a soft click and a flash of light you can preserve that something and you can see it any time, and it can be seen even of your children’s grandchildren . But was it always like this?
The first photography in the world was made in the year of 1826, by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, a french man intrested in science. He started to experiment since 1822, using different methods in which he tried to copy engravings, but only had modest success. But in the summer of 1826, he choosed as support a well polished tin plate, and as a photosensitive material, unbelieveble, a mixture of bitumen, something like asphalt. After a long exposure of 8 hours, thing which led to the enlightment of the buildings on both sides, he passed on to develop it, by introducing it in a solvent to wash off the bitumen that was not strenghtened by the light. And all this led to a positive result. And so appeared the first photography, „La cour du domaine du Gras”.
He called this process „Heliographie” and presented it to the Royal Society from England, where he did not got too much attention. He gaved his photography to his friend,the illustrator Francis Bauer, which adnotated its frame with data about the author. Niepce could’t reproduce many images, because he died in 1833, without being recognised as the first photographer of the world. This only happened in 1952, when Helmuth Gernsheim, photography colector and passionate of history , finds the photo and show it to the world. The picture was donated to the University from Texax, and it still there today.
The best copy of it was made by Gernsheim and Kodak, on 20 March of 1952.
And as a joke,
This is the way in which photographs were taken stone age.
So let’s all celebrate this special day, as it has to be. Go and photograph something, it doesn’t matter what , just photograph, like Joseph Nicéphore Niépce did 190 years ago.