View from the Window at Le Gras

A faint image on a metal (pewter) backing. The metal is scuffed, but some rooftops, the top of a tree and the horizon are visible.
The original plate, showing rooftops visible from a second-story bedroom window[1]

View from the Window at Le Gras[2] (French: Point de vue du Gras) is the oldest surviving photograph. It was created by French inventor Nicéphore Niépce sometime between 1826 and 1827[a] in Saint-Loup-de-Varennes, France, and shows parts of the buildings and surrounding countryside of his estate, Le Gras [fr], as seen from a high window. The image was created by heliography, a process which Niépce had invented around 1822, and which uses the hardening of bitumen in light to record an image after washing off the remaining unhardened material.

  1. ^ "le point de vue du Gras de Nicéphore Niépce". www.niepce-daguerre.com. Retrieved 2020-04-04.
  2. ^ "First photograph, View from the Window at Le Gras, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, ca. 1826". University of Texas at Austin. Retrieved May 20, 2017.
  3. ^ Kaja Silverman, « The Miracle of Analogy : Or The History of Photography », vol. 1, Stanford University Press, 2015 (ISBN 978-0-8047-9327-8 et 978-0-8047-9399-5), p. 60–65.
  4. ^ Pierre-Georges Harmant et Paul Marillier, « Some Thoughts on the World's First Photograph », The Photographic Journal (en), vol. 107, no 4, avril 1967, p. 130–140, trad. « À propos de la plus ancienne photographie du monde », Photo-Ciné-Revue, mai 1972, p. 231–237.
  5. ^ Helmut Gernsheim, « The 150th Anniversary of Photography », « History of Photography », vol. 1, no 1, janvier 1977, p. 3–8 (DOI 10.1080/03087298.1977.10442876
  6. ^ 1826 is also mentioned p.14, in the chapter written by Paul-Louis Roubert and François Brunet on the specialized reference book « L'art De La Photographie - Des Origines À Nos Jours », directed by André Gunthert and Michel Poivert, published by Citadelles et Mazenod publisher, ISBN 9782850886805
  7. ^ French: « La première photographie au monde », Études photographiques, no 3 « Frontières de l'image / Le territoire et le document », November 1997, where it is mentioned “(fig. 1. Nicéphore Niépce, "Point de vue du Gras", 1826, héliographie sur étain, 16,6 x 20,2 cm, encadrée). [p. 12]”
  8. ^ Some Thoughts on the World's First Photograph ", The Photographic Journal, vol. 107 (4), avril 1967, p. 130-140 ; cf. H. Gernsheim, The origins of Photography, Londres, New York, Thames and Hudson, 1982, p. 34. : in 1982, Gernsheim goes back on his dating, and validate the date of 1826, proposed by P.-G. Harmant et P. Marillier in 1967.


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