The Inventors

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I am at the dawning of a new world," wrote Nicéphore Niépce in 1827 after he used a camera obscura to fix the scene outside his window onto a metal plate, thus creating the world's first surviving photograph. "View from the Window at Le Gras" far surpassed earlier attempts to capture images using methods that only managed to reproduce outlines and shadows. This program traces the early history of photography, from Renaissance dabblings with the camera obscura up to the 19th century, when the calotype overtook the daguerreotype as the photographic medium of choice. Explaining both the technical processes of the first cameras and their capabilities, the video shows how inventors including Niépce, Thomas Wedgwood, Henry Fox Talbot, Hippolyte Bayard, and Louis Daguerre pushed the boundaries of composition, lighting, and portraiture with each new advance in photography.