Photography began in 1827 ?

[A.J. Dickson]

According to this it is time to rewrite the history books


http://www.bjp-online.com/british-jo...-history-write

[Richard Wasserman]

Very interesting–thank you!

[Richard K.]

I wouldn't make too much of this until Norsigian proves that they were actually taken by Niepce in 1827...

I'm not sure why this is a history rewrite; the Niepce story is well known, no?

[Steven Barall]

I agree that Niepce is no stranger and that nothing going on here is really that mysterious.

The way that Niepce's photos are important is that they just go to highlight, yet again, that like all inventions, the better invention gets all the credit. Because we find out that he did something a year or two before Daguerre doesn't automatically make Dags unimportant.

It doesn't make Niepce's photos unimportant as art objects but as a technological advance, Daguerre is more important. Daguerreotype's are fundamentally different from the very painterly photos of Niepce. Dags stand alone as a new thing and not just a new version of the old thing which is what pictorial photos are. The importance of the ultra clarity, forthrightness and honesty of Dags can not be stressed enough.

Niepce does not get credit for inventing the television and digital cameras. He made some beautiful photos and that's more than enough as far as I'm concerned. I hope that someone is looking at my photos 170 years from now.

Cheers all. Steven

[W K Longcor]

The way I learned it was -- LOTS of people were doing photography of sorts, but the Daguerreotype process was the first commercially successful system to be used.

[paulr]

What's strange about this is that all the histories I've read, including very old ones, mark 1826 as the year Niepce first made permanent photographic images. Not sure what they're claiming as a big discovery ... maybe it's a portfolio that's never surfaced before. But 1827 isn't news.

Here's his first known photograph taken from nature, in 1826.

The way I learned it was -- LOTS of people were doing photography of sorts, but the Daguerreotype process was the first commercially successful system to be used.

I don't know about lots of people, but there may well have been a few. Niepce made the first image that didn't quickly fade. Daguerre made the first commercially viable process, with William Henry Fox Talbot right on his heels.

[Mark Sawyer]

Let's not leave out poor old Hippolyte Bayard yet again...

[ic-racer]

A pewter plate with a deposit of light-solidified material which resembles the resin obtained when heating lavender oil, which helped the plate accept the image."
The plate is the first and only known example of this process.

That is news, why don't you guys just read the article

[paulr]

That is news, why don't you guys just read the article

Guilty. I thought it was just about his heliographs. Interesting indeed. But this thread's title is misleading. The article's about a newly discovered early process, not the earliest one.

[Brian Stein]

ok need to go back to the history books, but I thought the lavender oil thing was known for quite a while.