#firstphotograph

     To quote the smash musical Hamilton, “Look around look around at how lucky we are to be alive right now!” Today is World Photo Day! It is not a day to take selfies, but to reverse the camera on your phone and celebrate photography!       Now. World Photo Day was founded by Korske Ara , and I suggest you go to worldphotoday.com and contribute to the huge gallery they have to celebrate the power of photography around the world. But, being the history buff that I am, I thought I’d share a little photo history with y'all. It’s interesting. I promise.

     The Daguerrotype takes a lot of credit for photography. As well it should, because it was the first publicly announced photographic process. But did you know that Louis Daguerre did not come up with the process all by himself? Or that there was a bit of a bump in the road named Henry Fox Talbot? Before the Daguerrotype was made public in 1839, there was the Heliograph. Invented by Joseph Nicephore Niepce, the heliograph was the first permanent form of photo process. View from the Window at Le Gras, taken in 1826, is regarded as the first photograph thanks to Mr. Niepce. I actually got to see it in person a couple of years ago. It is held at the University of Texas in Austin for some reason, and I didn’t even know! I just stumbled upon it during a Gone with the Wind exhibit.       Daguerre and Niepce were in correspondence for many years before Niepce’s death in 1833. Reluctant to give away anything of his Heliograph process, Niepce eventually began to develop new processes with Daguerre. And when I say Niepce didn’t want anything of his process getting out, I mean it. The letters had secret codes in them. After Joseph Niepce’s death, Daguerre continued to try to find the right combination of chemicals to make what is known today as the Daguerrotype (get it?), an image on a silver coated plate set with Mercury vapors.       The French Government recognized the Deguerrotype and Louis Deguerre became known as the “Father of Photography”. But. A man named Henry Fox Talbot had something to say about it. He claimed that he had priority over the process, because, little did Daguerre know, in 1835 while he was mastering his process in France, Talbot was doing a similar process in England with light sensitive paper. Talbot’s claim eventually did not hold up, because, come to find out, they were two very different processes. But he did become one of the first people to use photography as art and established his own process called the Calotype.

     So there’s a little history for ya! Now go forth and create!