Considered to be one of the defining moments in the history of photography, French inventor Joseph Nicéphore Niépce made the first permanent image from his window, sometime between 1826 and 1827. This picture, called “View from the Window at Le Gras”, needed at least eight hours of exposure. Some researchers believe it might have taken several days.
He later worked with another Frenchman, Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, to improve the process. After Niépce died in 1833, Daguerre continued the work and invented the Daguerreotype photographic process. It was a big improvement over Niépce’s Heliography, reducing exposure time from hours (or days) to just a few minutes.
Photostory: Of laughs and lenses
One of the earliest surviving Daguerreotypes is “View of the Boulevard du Temple” (taken in 1837, or 1838), showing a Paris street. Even though the exposure was much shorter than Heliography, it still took 8–10 minutes. As a result, moving people disappeared from the image — except for one man having his shoes polished, along with the shoe-shiner.
On 19th August 1839, Daguerre handed over all rights and details of Daguerreotype photographic process to the French government. In return, he received a lifelong pension of 6,000 francs per year. The French government then made the invention free for everyone in the world, calling it a “gift to the world”. This decision helped photography spread rapidly across the globe.
To commemorate the event, 19th August is observed as World Photography Day by international photographic community for whom, to quote Aaron Siskind, “Photography is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving.”
(World Photography Day)
Anindya Majumdar is a trekker, photographer and travel writer since
early ‘90s. His travelogues are regularly published in leading Bengali travel magazines. He
has won more than 30 photographic awards and been conferred with international photographic distinctions like Associate of Royal Photographic Society (ARPS) from Royal Photographic Society, Great Britain and Excellence FIAP (EFIAP) from Fédération Internationale de l'Art Photographique, a partner of UNESCO. His website is www.anindyamajumdar.com
