French inventor who made the first surviving photograph
Louis Daguerre
Painter and showman who developed the daguerreotype
William Henry Fox Talbot
English inventor of the negative-positive calotype process
Plate 061
1826/27
France; England
No photograph is shown for this exhibition. The museum displays an image only where it can show the object honestly.
About this date
Nicéphore Niépce made the oldest surviving camera photograph in 1826 or 1827. Louis Daguerre’s daguerreotype was announced in 1839.
About credit
Niépce, Daguerre and Talbot all contributed. The French government bought the daguerreotype and gave it “free to the world” in 1839.
Chapter II
The world before
Life before Photography
Only painters and engravers could record appearances, and portraits were expensive.
II
The human achievement
How it came about
Niépce’s “View from the Window at Le Gras” needed hours of exposure. Daguerre’s method used a silvered copper plate and gave sharp images in minutes. Talbot’s paper negatives could produce many prints. In 1888 George Eastman’s Kodak camera brought photography to amateurs.
III
Understanding the invention
How it works
Photography, explained in two steps.
01
Step 01 of 02
Light-sensitive chemicals
Silver compounds darken where light strikes them.
Light-sensitive chemicals
Fixing the image
IV
The transformation
What changed for humanity
News and science
Photographs documented events, medicine and astronomy.
Art
Painters rethought what painting should do.
Photography allowed accurate pictures of people, places and events, and changed art, science, news and memory.
V
Before and after
Life before and after Photography
Before
A costly portrait painting.
After
A photograph affordable to many.
On larger screens, drag the divider (or use the arrow keys) to give more room to the world before or after.
Moving pictures are rapid sequences of photographs.
Beyond the collection
Digital cameras
Sensors replaced film.
VII
Human stories
The people and the moments
The Boulevard du Temple
Daguerre’s 1838 view of a Paris street shows what may be the first photograph of a person, a man having his boots shined, who stood still long enough to register.
Where accounts differ, this museum follows the documented record and says so.