Photograph ‘First’

Posted May 3rd, 2008

The first photograph ever was taken just 180 years ago and look at the advances we’ve made. Neatorama website took a look at some of the historic first in the field of photography

World’s First Photograph

The grainy picture above is the world’s first photograph called “View from the Window at Le Gras” (circa 1826), taken and developed by French photographer pioneer Joseph Nicéphore Niépce. He called this process “heliography” or sun drawing - it certainly was a long process: the exposure time was about 8 hour
World’s First Daguerreotype

Although daguerreotype [wiki] was not the first photographic process to be invented, it was the first commercially viable process (earlier techniques required hours and hours of successful exposure and therefore weren’t suitable for taking people’s photos).
World’s First Human Portrait

In 1839, Robert Cornelius, a Dutch chemist who immigrated to Philadelphia, took a daguerreotype portrait of himself outside of his family’s store and made history: he made the world’s first human photograph!
First daguerreotype portrait of a woman

The earliest American attempts in duplicating the photographic experiments of the Frenchman Louis Daguerre occurred at NYU in 1839. John W. Draper, professor of chemistry, built his own camera and made what may be the first human portrait taken in the United States, after a 65-second exposure. The sitter, his sister Dorothy Catherine Draper, had her face powdered with flour in an early attempt to accentuate contrasts.
World’s First Photomontage

In 1858, Henry Peach Robinson made the world’s first photomontage by combining multiple negatives to form a single image. Robinson’s first and most famous composite photo, called “Fading Away”, was a composition of five negatives. It depicted a girl dying of consumption (or tuberculosis), and quite controversial as some objected to the morbid subject of the photo
World’s Oldest Surviving Aerial Photo

The first aerial photo was taken by Gaspard-Félix Tournachon, better known as Nadar, in 1858, using a tethered balloon over the Bievre Valley, France. Unfortunately, Nadar’s aerial photos were lost - so the oldest surviving aerial photo, shown here, was that of Boston in 1860, taken by James Wallace Black, also using a balloon.
World’s First Color Photograph

The oldest known color photograph was taken by Louis Ducos du Hauron in 1872. The photo is of a view of Angouleme in Southern France
World’s Most Expensive Photo

You’re looking at Edward Steichen’s photo of a pond in Long Island, New York, in 1904. Don’t laugh: this rare print has set the world record for most expensive photograph, sold for $2.9 million in February 2006!