Photography and Its Origins

Tanya Sheehan, Andres Zervigon, Tanya Sheehan, Andres Zervigon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9780415722902
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317578956
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Historiography

Recent decades have seen a flourishing interest in and speculation about the origins of photography. Spurred by rediscoveries of 'first' photographs and proclamations of photography's death in the digital age, scholars have been rethinking who and what invented the medium.

Photography and Its Origins reflects on this interest in photography's beginnings by reframing it in critical and specifically historiographical terms. How and why do we write about the origins of the medium? Whom or what do we rely on to construct those narratives? What's at stake in choosing to tell stories of photography's genesis in one way or another? And what kind of work can those stories do?

Edited by Tanya Sheehan and Andrés Mario Zervigón, this collection of 16 original essays, illustrated with 32 colour images, showcases prominent and emerging voices in the field of photography studies. Their research cuts across disciplines and methodologies, shedding new light on old questions about histories and their writing.

Photography and Its Origins will serve as a valuable resource for students and scholars in art history, visual and media studies, and the history of science and technology.

Part I Rethinking first photograph(er)s

1 A Sensational Story Helmut Gernsheim and “the world's first photograph”

Jessica S. McDonald

DOI: 10.4324/9781315740096-1

One famous photograph has been the subject of exhibitions, symposia, films, television programs, news reports, lecture tours, scientific analyses, personal memoirs, and an architectural reconstruction. Popularly known as “the world’s first photograph,” the pewter plate bears only the faint image of a courtyard, but represents a successful attempt by French inventor Joseph Nicéphore Niépce to record a view from nature in 1826 or 1827. Niépce’s View from the Window at Le Gras, as the object is now known, has lent substance to stories told by a succession of stewards, beginning with Niépce himself when he brought the plate to England to promote his invention in 1827, and ending when the Harry Ransom Center placed it on permanent display in 2003. In the intervening years this object, along with Niépce’s “memoir” describing the process he called “heliography,” has been brandished as evidence for priority claims naming Niépce the inventor of photography.

The person who controlled the story of “the world’s first photograph” longest was Helmut Gernsheim. That he and his first wife Alison—prodigious collectors, authoritative historians, and determined advocates for photography—tracked down Niépce’s mythical heliograph and memoir is well known, largely due to their announcement of the photograph’s “re-discovery” in 1952, and Gernsheim’s continuous retelling of the story after Alison’s death in 1969. As is often true of narratives told over a lifetime, his evolved into an epic tale of conquest. “Only a historian can understand my feeling at that moment,” he wrote in 1977, recalling the first time he set eyes on the plate. “I had reached the goal of my research and held the foundation stone of photography in my hand.”¹ This chapter rethinks the historical moment and personal circumstance surrounding the Gernsheims’ public announcement of their find, and it examines their subsequent rewriting of the history of photography. It investigates the degree to which later historians adopted their revision, while demonstrating Helmut Gernsheim’s persistent control of the story, long after relinquishing ownership of the object. Drawing attention to the enduring influence of our foundational histories, this chapter calls for continued scrutiny of the figures who shaped them.

Origin myths

Helmut Gernsheim began formulating his account years before he held Niépce’s photograph in his hand. In April 1950, he appealed to the readers of the Observer to help him find the lost “Niépceotype” thought to have been taken at Kew Church when Niépce visited England in 1827, asserting that he had “traced the history of the Kew Church photograph and the memoir up to 1898.”² If found, he declared, the photograph “would be the first extant picture from nature.” By June 1950, further investigation convinced him that the subject of the photograph was not Kew Church but the “oft-repeated view from Niépce’s window at Gras” and that it was made in 1824.³ In July, he submitted to the Photographic Journal a meticulously documented account, compiled in collaboration with Alison Gernsheim, of what brought him to this assessment.⁴ Years later he recalled that he had written the article to “close the matter” after Gibbon Pritchard, son of the last owner of the material, notified Gernsheim that the items weren’t returned after their last exhibition half a century earlier.⁵ Perhaps learning from Niépce’s failure to publish his experiments, Gernsheim made sure to enter his own findings into the record, thus deflecting his doubters. If “the world’s first photograph” was ever to be found, the publication ensured that Gernsheim would be known as the historian “who first claimed it.”⁶

The Gernsheims’ claim was galvanized in January 1952 when they received a letter from the widow of Gibbon Pritchard, announcing the missing photograph had been found.⁷ She had come across the plate along with Niépce’s memoir, a print of the Cardinal d’Amboise, another version of the memoir, and a letter in a forgotten shipping container. Upon this discovery, she remembered Gernsheim’s earlier correspondence with her husband. Gernsheim replied immediately, explaining in his letter that he and his wife cared for their historical collection on behalf of “all who are interested in the history of photography” and that they wished to offer it “as a gift, to be the foundation of a national or international museum.” He asked if Mrs. Pritchard would be willing to donate the precious items to their collection, ensuring they would be “preserved for posterity.”⁸ Gernsheim then paid her a visit on February 14, 1952, bringing gift copies of his books. Particularly enchanted by the volume of “rediscovered” Lewis Carroll photographs, Mrs. Pritchard was pleased to hand over the Niépce items to him on the spot.

The Gernsheims wasted no time preparing an announcement of their historic find. In order to prove decisively that the pewter plate was “the world’s first photograph,” they had to eliminate any doubt that this was the missing landscape “from nature” presented by Niépce to Francis Bauer in 1827. Key to substantiating their story was a reproduction clearly depicting the view from Niépce’s window. After trying unsuccessfully to photograph the reflective surface, Gernsheim ultimately received assistance from the Kodak Research Laboratory. He made a sketch of the image before handing it over (Figure 1.1), so if the plate was ruined in the reproduction process, he would have a visual record of the pigeon house, the pear tree, and other landmarks of the view. These details needed to be clear beyond suspicion, and so when Kodak, after much difficulty, produced an image that all but obliterated the view (Figure 1.2)—barely discernible in the first place—Gernsheim took matters into his own hands. He set about retouching the reproduction with watercolor, enhancing contrast to emphasize lines and shapes, and reduce “blemishes,”⁹ producing a copy that he believed was “much closer to the original than the first reproduction” (Figure 1.3).¹⁰

Distributed with the headline “Re-Discovery of the World’s First Photograph,” the Gernsheims’ story, accompanied by the retouched reproduction, became part of a carefully planned publicity campaign targeted at newspapers and magazines across Europe. Some editors were offered first publishing rights for the “sensational story” and were encouraged to telegraph their acceptance—and offer of payment—to secure the deal.¹¹ It debuted in The Times on April 15, 1952, somewhat buried on page 6, with the headline: “The Earliest True Photograph.”¹² For the Gernsheims, the principal significance of this faint relic rested not in its identity as the world’s first photograph ever, but in its ability to provide physical evidence for what they and others before them had posited—that Niépce was the world’s first photographer. “There is no absolute agreement on the year in which Niépce first succeeded in taking a permanent view from nature, though most historians favour 1824,” they wrote. Still, if one accepted 1826 as the date of their plate, as they did, and lined it up alongside the earliest extant results obtained by other contenders for “inventor of photography,” then Niépce came out nine years ahead of Talbot, and eleven years ahead of Daguerre.

Most publications evidently hoped to hook readers with the “world’s first” language supplied by the Gernsheims, with the fine historical details alluding to Niépce’s prior successes often lost in reports for a popular audience. While the Gernsheims seem to have allowed editors some creative license, they protested when publications failed to pay them due credit for their discovery. As they saw it, they were responsible for uncovering the physical evidence that crowned Niépce the “true inventor of photography,” and had uncovered the very “origin” of photography itself. They were thus positioned to settle a century of priority debates and affirm their role as the principal agents of a historical overhaul when they set about rewriting the history of photography.

Rewriting history

It is clear from the beginning of their monumental volume The History of Photography from the Earliest Use of the Camera Obscura in the Eleventh Century up to 1914 (1955) that Niépce is the leading character in a tale that begins well before 1839. An entire chapter called “The First Photographer” is dedicated to him, and appears first in the section on “The Invention of Photography” rather than figuring in “Prehistory of Photography.” This marks a shift in the historical structure then most recently presented by Beaumont Newhall, who in drawing a line between proto-photography and photography proper had associated Niépce with the former category. For Newhall, photography was truly launched in 1839 when it was given to the public, and he avoided anointing any one figure its inventor.

Figure 1.1Helmut Gernsheim, 1952, graphite on paper. Reproduction of Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, View from the Window at Le Gras, 1826 or 1827, heliograph. Courtesy of the Gernsheim Collection, Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin.

Figure 1.2P. B. Watt, Kodak Research Laboratory, 1952, gelatin silver print. Reproduction of Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, View from the Window at Le Gras, 1826 or 1827, heliograph. Courtesy of the Gernsheim Collection, Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin.

Figure 1.3Helmut Gernsheim, after Kodak Research Laboratory reproduction, 1952, gelatin silver print with applied watercolor. Reproduction of Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, View from the Window at Le Gras, 1826 or 1827, heliograph. Courtesy of the Gernsheim Collection, Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin.

The very first sentence of the Gernsheims’ introduction acknowledges the previously accepted date of 1839, but dismisses it on a technical basis, stating that Niépce had taken photographs—“permanently fixed images of the camera obscura”—in 1826.¹³ Despite this initial certainty, the remainder of their introduction awkwardly balances the historical with the promotional. The last paragraph begins with the admission that “the invention of photography is the result of an evolution rather than a sudden discovery by any one man,” yet its final sentence proclaims that “Niépce alone deserves to be considered the true inventor of photography.”¹⁴ These inconsistencies seep into the chapter, as the Gernsheims simultaneously retain the likelihood that Niépce made “a permanent view of nature” as early as 1824 and state that he definitely did not do so until 1826, the date given for their heliograph. They mention Niépce’s success making negative images in the camera, permanent enough that he could send samples to his brother, in 1816. The Gernsheims, following the autobiographical announcement of their great find in 1952, write themselves into this chapter, retracing the trajectory of Niépce’s view until the moment “it was rediscovered in England through our efforts” in January 1952.¹⁵

Whereas Newhall had referred to “A View of Kew” in the 1949 edition of his History of Photography, the Gernsheims were now in a position to give the heliograph a new name, and did not settle for Niépce’s own descriptive title, “point de vue.” Each element of the caption they ultimately gave the photograph—“The world’s first photograph, by Nicéphore Niépce. View from his window at Gras. 8″ × 6½″. 1826″—supported an aspect of their discovery. Part of their mission was to dispel the myth of the “supposed Kew photograph” and be first to establish its actual subject, and so the description “View from his window at Gras,” must be read as essential to their claim.¹⁶ To confirm that this plate is a match with the one identified in nineteenth-century inventories, they included its precise physical dimensions (information not supplied i...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• Acknowledgments
• About the contributors
• Introduction—Tanya Sheehan and Andrés Mario Zervigón
• PART I Rethinking first photograph(er)s
• PART II Multiplying beginnings
• PART III Writing (trans)national histories
• PART IV Tracing scientific origins
• Selected bibliography
• Index