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 âthe worldâs first photograph,â the pewter plate bears only the faint image of a courtyard, but represents a successful attempt by French inventor Joseph NicĂ©phore NiĂ©pce to record a view from nature in 1826 or 1827. NiĂ©pceâs 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 NiĂ©pce 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 NiĂ©pceâs âmemoirâ describing the process he called âheliography,â has been brandished as evidence for priority claims naming NiĂ©pce the inventor of photography.
The person who controlled the story of âthe worldâs first photographâ longest was Helmut Gernsheim. That he and his first wife Alisonâprodigious collectors, authoritative historians, and determined advocates for photographyâtracked down NiĂ©pceâs mythical heliograph and memoir is well known, largely due to their announcement of the photographâs âre-discoveryâ in 1952, and Gernsheimâs continuous retelling of the story after Alisonâs death in 1969. As is often true of narratives told over a lifetime, his evolved into an epic tale of conquest. âOnly a historian can understand my feeling at that moment,â he wrote in 1977, recalling the first time he set eyes on the plate. âI had reached the goal of my research and held the foundation stone of photography in my hand.â1 This chapter rethinks the historical moment and personal circumstance surrounding the Gernsheimsâ 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 Gernsheimâs 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 NiĂ©pceâs photograph in his hand. In April 1950, he appealed to the readers of the Observer to help him find the lost âNiĂ©pceotypeâ thought to have been taken at Kew Church when NiĂ©pce visited England in 1827, asserting that he had âtraced the history of the Kew Church photograph and the memoir up to 1898.â2 If found, he declared, the photograph âwould be the first extant picture from nature.â By June 1950, further investigation convinced him that the subject of the photograph was not Kew Church but the âoft-repeated view from NiĂ©pceâs window at Grasâ 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 âclose the matterâ after Gibbon Pritchard, son of the last owner of the material, notified Gernsheim that the items werenât returned after their last exhibition half a century earlier.5 Perhaps learning from NiĂ©pceâs failure to publish his experiments, Gernsheim made sure to enter his own findings into the record, thus deflecting his doubters. If âthe worldâs first photographâ was ever to be found, the publication ensured that Gernsheim would be known as the historian âwho first claimed it.â6
The Gernsheimsâ 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 NiĂ©pceâs memoir, a print of the Cardinal dâAmboise, another version of the memoir, and a letter in a forgotten shipping container. Upon this discovery, she remembered Gernsheimâs 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 âall who are interested in the history of photographyâ and that they wished to offer it âas a gift, to be the foundation of a national or international museum.â He asked if Mrs. Pritchard would be willing to donate the precious items to their collection, ensuring they would be âpreserved for posterity.â8 Gernsheim then paid her a visit on February 14, 1952, bringing gift copies of his books. Particularly enchanted by the volume of ârediscoveredâ Lewis Carroll photographs, Mrs. Pritchard was pleased to hand over the NiĂ©pce 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 âthe worldâs first photograph,â they had to eliminate any doubt that this was the missing landscape âfrom natureâ presented by NiĂ©pce to Francis Bauer in 1827. Key to substantiating their story was a reproduction clearly depicting the view from NiĂ©pceâs 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 )âbarely discernible in the first placeâGernsheim took matters into his own hands. He set about retouching the reproduction with watercolor, enhancing contrast to emphasize lines and shapes, and reduce âblemishes,â9 producing a copy that he believed was âmuch closer to the original than the first reproductionâ (Figure 1.3 ).10
Distributed with the headline âRe-Discovery of the Worldâs First Photograph,â the Gernsheimsâ 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 âsensational storyâ and were encouraged to telegraph their acceptanceâand offer of paymentâto secure the deal.11 It debuted in The Times on April 15, 1952, somewhat buried on page 6, with the headline: âThe Earliest True Photograph.â12 For the Gernsheims, the principal significance of this faint relic rested not in its identity as the worldâs first photograph ever, but in its ability to provide physical evidence for what they and others before them had positedâthat NiĂ©pce was the worldâs first photographer. âThere is no absolute agreement on the year in which NiĂ©pce first succeeded in taking a permanent view from nature, though most historians favour 1824,â 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 âinventor of photography,â then NiĂ©pce came out nine years ahead of Talbot, and eleven years ahead of Daguerre.
Most publications evidently hoped to hook readers with the âworldâs firstâ language supplied by the Gernsheims, with the fine historical details alluding to NiĂ©pceâs 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 NiĂ©pce the âtrue inventor of photography,â and had uncovered the very âoriginâ 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 NiĂ©pce is the leading character in a tale that begins well before 1839. An entire chapter called âThe First Photographerâ is dedicated to him, and appears first in the section on âThe Invention of Photographyâ rather than figuring in âPrehistory of Photography.â 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 NiĂ©pce 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 1.1 Helmut Gernsheim, 1952, graphite on paper. Reproduction of Joseph NicĂ©phore NiĂ©pce, 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 1.2 P. B. Watt, Kodak Research Laboratory, 1952, gelatin silver print. Reproduction of Joseph NicĂ©phore NiĂ©pce, 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 1.3 Helmut Gernsheim, after Kodak Research Laboratory reproduction, 1952, gelatin silver print with applied watercolor. Reproduction of Joseph NicĂ©phore NiĂ©pce, 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 Gernsheimsâ introduction acknowledges the previously accepted date of 1839, but dismisses it on a technical basis, stating that NiĂ©pce had taken photographsââpermanently fixed images of the camera obscuraââin 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 âthe invention of photography is the result of an evolution rather than a sudden discovery by any one man,â yet its final sentence proclaims that âNiĂ©pce alone deserves to be considered the true inventor of photography.â14 These inconsistencies seep into the chapter, as the Gernsheims simultaneously retain the likelihood that NiĂ©pce made âa permanent view of natureâ as early as 1824 and state that he definitely did not do so until 1826, the date given for their heliograph. They mention NiĂ©pceâs 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 NiĂ©pceâs view until the moment âit was rediscovered in England through our effortsâ in January 1952.15
Whereas Newhall had referred to âA View of Kewâ 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 NiĂ©pceâs own descriptive title, âpoint de vue. â Each element of the caption they ultimately gave the photographââThe worldâs first photograph, by NicĂ©phore NiĂ©pce. View from his window at Gras. 8âł Ă 6Âœâł. 1826âłâsupported an aspect of their discovery. Part of their mission was to dispel the myth of the âsupposed Kew photographâ and be first to establish its actual subject, and so the description âView from his window at Gras,â 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...