Started by Hugo Laurent (@hugo_vhs) ·
the first photo took at least eight hours to expose
6 sources · 36 min down the hole
How I got here
- Started with
- What's the oldest surviving photograph?
- Ended at
- Boulevard du Temple (photograph)
The Trail
- “first photograph ever taken” (google.com)
- View from the Window at Le Gras (en.wikipedia.org)
- Nicéphore Niépce (en.wikipedia.org)
- Heliography (en.wikipedia.org)
- Louis Daguerre (en.wikipedia.org)
- Boulevard du Temple (photograph) (en.wikipedia.org)
first photo with a person in it, by accident
What I came away with
Niépce's view from his window (around 1826-27) was made on a pewter plate coated with bitumen, and estimates of the exposure range from about eight hours to several days. Daguerre's 1838 Paris street looks empty because moving traffic didn't register, except a man who stood still having his boots shined.
Keep going
- the last roll of Kodachrome · Fern Achterberg · 7 sources
- hidden mothers in Victorian baby photos · Jade Fontaine · 5 sources
- 35mm photo film is movie film turned sideways · Hannah Kim · 6 sources
- some old camera lenses are radioactive · Fern Achterberg · 5 sources