The Story of The World’s First Picture

View from the Window at Gras

If you are going to live the year of 2026, you must remember that you have to celebrate this first picture and the first 200 years of photography. The world of Photography started with one picture and this picture is considered the first permanently captured image.

 “View from the Window at Gras” was made by Joseph Nicephore Niépce (French, 1765-1833), in 1826. Niépce placed his camera in a window of his home in order to capture a view of the neighboring roof tops and because the insensitive materials, the image had to be exposed more then eight hours.  

This photo was found in London in the 1950s among some letters written by Niépce. Niépce had obtained images as early as 1813, but they gradually faded, because he was unable to fix them.  The public announcement of Louis- Jacques-Mande Daguerre’s photographic process in August 1839 is usually accepted as the birth of photography. But, in fact, Daguerre’s compatriot Nicephore Niépce had succeeded in fixing images with a camera obscura a good decade earlier. View from the Window at Gras