Nicéphore Niépce

The father of photography

Hello steemians.

Another weekend with another Dedication post, another post with useful information about art, artists, photographers.
Our dedicated person this week will be a person, who made the first steps of what today we call "photography".
Today, everyone has a photograph or at least a smartphone which is able to capture a photo, right? There is no person upon the earth who does not know what is a photo. There are many differences between photos, but there is one thing that will never change. The main technic. No matter what kind of photographer you are, you must follow a line in order to have a photo.

• Capture with a photo-sensitive device (film, cmos-the sensor of our digital photographs)
• Edit (Post production)
• Print

This is a line followed by every single photographer right? Those steps were from the first days of photography. And thanks to Nicéphore Niépce we are now able to make our life better with shooting bombs and selfies.

But, who was Nicéphore Niépce?

Joseph Nicéphore Niépce (7 March 1765 – 5 July 1833) was a French inventor, now usually credited as the inventor of photography and a pioneer in that field. Niépce developed heliography, a technique he used to create the world's oldest surviving product of a photographic process: a print made from a photoengraved printing plate in 1825. In 1826 or 1827, he used a primitive camera to produce the oldest surviving photograph of a real-world scene. Among Niépce's other inventions was the Pyréolophore, the world's first internal combustion engine, which he conceived, created, and developed with his older brother Claude.[source]

To be honest, Niepce was not the father of photography, but the inventor of photo-capture. With some problems like unstable print (The print was not stable so after few seconds the photo-sensitive plate was blank), but still, he was the first person who managed to "print" and not draw what Obscura was showing.

The first photo picture, Joseph Niepce 1825

This was the first photo picture captured by Joseph Niepce. In our days we will say "WHAT? This is a picture?"
First of all, do not forget the year, the kind, and what was the process.
This is the first photo... The first "print". Till then, they were only able to paint and draw inside Obscura. This is the start of another art liberation and art culture.

This is photography.

Some words about his blowing-mind thought and how does it work.

Niepce came up with the idea of using a petroleum derivative called "Bitumen of Judea". Bitumen hardens with exposure to light so the unhardened material was then washed away. The metal plate, which was the media used by Niepce, was then polished rendering a negative image which then was coated with ink producing a print. One of the numerous problems with this method was that the metal plate was heavy, expensive to produce, and took a lot of time to polish.source

Like I said before, we are talking about the years around 1825 which was the first printed project. Before that, it was known to everyone how to project an image from a hole (Obscura) but none was able or even thinking about how to capture this project. But, this was known to the painting artists and they were using this tact to almost every art piece.
Niepce made a liberation! Many artists were fighting against this, and the days after will be very hard to photography. Artists will not accept photography as art (no matter if they were using the Obscura for their works).

But let's go a few years before. 1816 - 1818 The first experiments.

• 1816 The first world negative
  This year was not only experimental to Nicéphore Niépce but to his brother too, Claude who went to Paris and then to England, trying to make the engine invention work. Nicéphore made his first experiment which gave success. He used, of course, our beloved camera Obscura, and he put pieces of papers, coated with silver salts (photo-sensitive, blacken with daylight). This was not the great success because the papers after few seconds were black all over the side. He called these images "retinas".

• Turn to the other side
  After his first experiments, regarding his results, he figured to inverse that to be able to make more stable chemicals and prints. Seeking this solution, Niépce used compounds that are bleached by light instead of blackened, like salts, iron oxide and manganese black oxide. This was not what he wanted because when he tried to eliminate and make stable the chemicals which had not been transformed by light yet, he removed the chemicals affected by light too. This didn't make any success, but it allowed Niépce to understand that it is not necessary to use a compound with chemical reaction visible to naked eye. As a consequence, Niépce got interested in all substances that interact with light.

• 1817 Principle of the invention of photography
  After a break of his inventions uppon photography and helping his brother and his inventions and tests in new fuels, he came back to his research with a clear mind. His research focused on a resin. A yellow resin which becomes green when it comes on contact with the daylight. This was not so interesting but that it loses its solubility in alcohol. This was helpful to Niépce and his research because he will be able to capture the light (as he wanted) and then stabilize it with simply alcohol (as he wanted too). But this was not able to finalise it because he didn't know that the resin was effective on UV rays and those were filtered inside the Obscura's lens. In fact, the lens was blocking UV rays so the resin was not able to change colour.

• 1819 - 1824 Invention of photoengraving
  Those years were the beginning of a new age in science and photography. With his last work, he manages to find a material with photo-senses changing colour in optical contact with the light. But he managed to find a technique to reproduce the draw to coated based materials (glass, copper or tin plates).

• Principle and technique

In order to reproduce drawings, around 1822-1823, Niépce conceived what we now call the contact print. He explains clearly how he applied varnish to the verso of an etching to make the paper translucid, and once dry, he applied this etching directly in contact with the copper or tin plate coated with bitumen varnish. He exposed the lot in full daylight during three to four hours, then rinsed the plate in lavender oil diluted with white kerosene. The bitumen that had been protected from the effect of light under the lines of the drawing then dissolved and let appear the raw metal. On the other hand, the light transmitted through the translucid paper had made the bitumen non-soluble and remained on the plate after the lavender oil rinse. The bitumen image was the drawing’s negative: the back is coloured in the dark bitumen brown and the lines are represented by the raw metal.
Then, Niépce invented a process that would allow getting the drawing etched in the metal. It was by means of the well known and simple principle of aqua fortis. The plate carrying the bitumen of Judea is dipped in an acid bath that bites the metal where it is not protected, meaning the places corresponding to the lines of the drawing. Because the bitumen varnish is acid resistant, the acid can penetrate down to the metal. Once the lines are etched in the plate, Niépce eliminated the bitumen varnish from the metal base to keep only the etched drawing on it.

• 1825-1829 The birth of photography
  Lithographic stones, copper plates and many other materials were now able to change it's condition and colour and
  Niépce managed to stabilize this. The year 1824, was the first successful contact of lithographic stones and camera Obscura with a close to good results. In 1825, the stones gave it's placed to copper plates, and one year after to tin plates.

Two years after (1827) Niépce had to travel to England, to his brother but with a surprise. His brother was dying. Leaving behind their engine invention without any improvement. This was the time he realised that this invention had no future and for sure no profit. Returning to France, a year after he found a new method, making him able to capture sharper and quality images, with not only black and white colours but with mid-tones too.

Using polished silver as a base and letting iodine vapours interact with the bitumen image, he obtained genuine photographs in black and white on a metal plate.
This was a new age in photography and lithography, but still, the problem was alive. He still needed hours and days of exposure to be able to capture the sunlight and the shadows, drawing a superior quality image.

This is photography. This is life. This is me

This post is not only a dedication to a photographer but to a special scientist, who won the time and managed to capture it in a material like copper, tin, glass... We owe him almost everything because his work gave us the "SNAP". This is not only a science winning but an art too. Don't forget that before, there were only painters, drawing images (many of them were using the Obscurae to claim the 100% of what they see, called "copyers") and till then, there was no evidence for anything. Everyone can say anything, spread fake news, and shuffle the truth. With photography, this was not very easy. Sure there were later many artists who tried to change the image, but no one was able to edit the negatives (known as films for analogue photography and RAW files for digital). Today I believe that it is very difficult to find an original photo, without any change, retuse, filtering. I am street art photographer, and I chose not to make any change in my files. The only acceptable changes for me is anything I could have when if I was on darkroom, and even then, I chose not to make extreme changes.

Source
Wikipeda - Nicéphore Niépce
Photo-Museum - Nicéphore Niépce
Britannica
Tutplus - Nicéphore Niépce
Wiki - Heliography
utexas - The first photograph

(I know that my post was not online this weekend, but I was working and I didn't manage to write my post. I want to make as a great job with at least those posts as I can because those are not only words, images or quotes... Those are life for me and at least I wanted to share them with you.

Weekly dedication #1 - Stephen Shore
Weekly dedication #2 - Bruce Gilden
Weekly dedication #3 - Garry Winogrand
Weekly dedication #4 - John Hiliard
Weekly dedication #5 - Chloe Kritharas Devienne
Weekly dedication #6 - Stan Douglas