Who was Joseph Nicéphore Niépce?

Heliograph on pewter plate, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce

Joseph Nicéphore Niépce is the Father of Photography.

Photography is a way of recording an image through the action of light on a light-sensitive surface. This is what Niépce did. He captured Light.

Two hundred years ago, in Saône-et-Loire *, France this quiet, modest man with an unpronounceable (to English speakers) and, unfortunately for him, forgettable, name ** produced the world’s first permanent image.

Niépce was a French engineer. Capturing images for posterity was just one of his many interests. As a boy, his brother Claude wanted to propel his model boats across the lake. Together, working on the piston-and-cylinder system, they invented the world's first internal combustion engine. They called it the pyreolophore from the Greek words for fire, wind and I produce.

Niépce is now almost forgotten except for nerds whereas photographers who came after him are bathed in glory.

Name a photographer, Who springs to mind? Daguerre, Cartier-Bresson, Doisneau, Fox Talbot, Julia Margaret Cameron, Ansel Adams, Capa, Arbus et al. Not Niépce.

What’s in a name, asked Shakespeare. Everything.

1816. Niépce captured images on paper coated with silver chloride. They were dark where they should be light and vice versa. He couldn’t stop them from darkening all over when brought into the light for viewing.

1825. He produced Engraving of a Man Leading a Horse by a process he called heliogravure to reproduce existing works of art. It was made by placing an engraving directly onto a photosensitive surface. Clever, but not a photograph.

1826. Niépce bought pewter‘plates’ from local suppliers. He chose one 16.2 × 20.2 cm (6.4 × 8.0 inches) the size of a small book, large enough to capture architectural detail, small enough to fit inside his camera obscura and coated it with Bitumen of Judea.

This is a naturally occurring tar-like substance. Dark, sticky and soluble until it’s exposed to light, which hardens it. It was used in ancient Egypt in mummification and for waterproofing boats.

Needing a light-sensitive surface, Niépce polished the plate until it was smooth. He was meticulous, any slight flaw would distort the image. He put the plate inside a camera obscura, aimed it out of an upstairs window and left the lens uncovered for hours—possibly days.

Where light had hit the bitumen, it was hard. Where shadows fell, it remained soft.

After exposure, Niépce washed the plate with lavender oil which dissolved the soft areas, leaving an image etched in hardened bitumen.

View from the Window at Le Gras shows the rooftops and countryside as seen from a window in his home. Niépce had finally managed to produce an image that didn’t fade. He called the process, heliography – sun graphics.

The word Photography wasn’t coined until 1839 by British scientist John Herschel. An experimental photographer, he understood that this new art form needed a name. Photography literally means drawing with light.

1827 On a visit to London to see his brother Claude, Niépce visited The Royal Society and gave his heliograph to one of the Fellows, a Francis Bauer.

1829. Niépce, a bit of a loner, reluctantly took Louis Daguerre on as a partner. He was suspicious of the man, but Daguerre wore him down with his endless questions. Building on the Niépce’s work, he and invented his daguerreotype to produce detailed permanent photographs on silver-plated sheets of copper. At first, it took a few minutes of exposure in the camera, but improvements reduced the exposure time to a few seconds.

He received widespread acclaim.

Niépce’s contributions were forgotten.

Born in 1765 Joseph Niépce had three siblings, Claude, Antoinette and Bernard. Louis XV was King of France.

His wealthy father, one of the King's advisors, was a lawyer at Court. His mother was the daughter of a lawyer, another of the King’s advisors.

As a boy, Joseph was enthralled by a book written in 1760 by Tiphaigne de la Roche who wrote science fiction. Giphantie (anagram of the author’s name) described a fictional futuristic process of fixing images with light.

‘The rays of light, reflected from objects, are captured on a canvas coated with a sticky substance... and the image remains fixed’.

There’s no evidence that Tiphaigne had heard of Bitumen of Judea’s light-sensitive properties. Niépce was the first.

Seeing Joseph’s fascination with light and images, his father gave him a camera obscura, a darkened box which projected scenes onto a surface.

Joseph used it to trace images but wasn’t very good. His frustration led him to find a way to fix the image permanently, without having to draw.

At the Oratorian College in Angers, Niépce studied science.

He took the name Nicéphore in honour of Saint Nicephorus.

He later joined Napoleon’s army in Italy as a staff officer. When he married and had a son, he returned to the family estate in France. With their mother, sister and younger brother Bernard, he and Claude managed the family estate as gentlemen-farmers.

1833 Niépce died of a stroke. His grave in the cemetery of Saint-Loup de Varennes *** is near the family home where he produced the world's first photograph.

1839 Daguerre sold his invention to the French government for a yearly stipend of 6,000 francs for the rest of his life. This angered Niépce’s son Isidore, who said Daguerre was reaping the benefits of his father's work. He was offered a government pension in return for disclosing the technical details of his father’s heliogravure process. The Niépce Estate then received 4,000 francs yearly.

1847 Abel Niépce de Saint-Victor, a chemist, continued the work of his uncle Nicéphore Niépce. He developed the first photographic process on glass using a mixture of egg white, the first to use albumen in photography.

1933 A splendid monument was built in Saint-Loup-de-Varennes to honour Niépce.

1936 Man Ray a devotee of the genius with the funny name, visited the monument. He made a gelatin silver print Monument à Nicéphore Niépce.

1952 Historians of photography Alison and Helmut Gernsheim wanted to see the famous View from the Window at Le Gras. They eventually tracked it down in the store room of The Royal Society in London. Last publicly shown in 1905, it was put away and forgotten.

1955 The Niépce Prize is awarded annually to a professional photographer who has lived and worked in France for over three years. One of the first to win it was Robert Doisneau.

You can buy an original Doisneau if you have the money but not an original Niépce. Owned by the French State, classified as an Official Treasure, it is of course, priceless.

1970 The International Astronomical Union (IAU) responsible for naming celestial features honoured Niépce by naming a lunar crater after him.

The man who fixed light on earth has his name on the far side of the moon.

2026 Bi-Centennial commemorating Niépce, the world’s first photographer.

* A departement in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region named after the rivers Saône and Loire

** Pronunciation appears to be arbitrary. I’m comfortable with Nee-eps.

*** His home is now a museum dedicated to his work