Nicéphore Niépce
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Joseph Nicéphore Niépce was a French inventor and one of the pioneers of photography. Niépce developed heliography, a technique he used to create the world's oldest surviving products of a photographi
Posthumous portrait by Léonard François Berger, 1854
Niépce's birthplace at Chalon-sur-Saône, with a plaque in his memory
One of the three earliest known photographic artifacts, created by Nicéphore Niépce in 1825. It is an ink-on-paper print, but the printing plate used to make it was photographically created by Niépce's heliography process. It reproduces a 17th-century Flemish engraving.
Still life of a set table, by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, 1824–1833, the second earliest known camera photograph of which any visual record has survived. It is seen here in a late 19th century printed reproduction. The original, which was on glass, disappeared very early in the 20th century and is presumed to have been accidentally destroyed
Louis Daguerre
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Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre was a French scientist, artist and photographer recognized for his invention of the eponymous daguerreotype process of photography. He became known as one of the fathers o
1844 daguerreotype
An engraving of Daguerre during his career
View of the Boulevard du Temple, taken by Daguerre in 1838 in Paris, includes the earliest known verified photograph of a person. The image shows a busy street, but because the exposure had to continue for four to five minutes the moving traffic is not visible. At the lower right, however, a man apparently having his boots polished, and the bootblack polishing them, were motionless enough for their images to be captured.
Daguerreotype possibly made by Daguerre in 1837. The subject is believed to be Constant Huet, who worked at the Natural History Museum, where Daguerre took pictures in 1837. If correct, this would be the oldest surviving portrait photograph of a human being.