The First Focus

I WRITE THIS WITH REVERENCE, for the first photograph ever taken.

It all started one fine day in France, 182 years ago. On a pewter plate just 1/16th of an inch thick, and coated with a coal tar derivative called bitumen, a Mr. Joseph Nicephore Niepce waited three days for the plate to be exposed. He washed and dissolved the remaining unexposed bitumen with oil of lavender and white petroleum, and gingerly looked onto what is now authenticated to be the first photograph. After all this time it can still be plainly seen as a glinting golden image: a farmhouse, pear and popular trees, and dovecote.

Every photographic tool we have today in media, from television to film, is focused and linked to that one amazing moment in 1826. I wouldn’t think it is stretching it a bit to say that the X-ray machine, electron microscope, the Hubbell telescope, even the computer, had its unpresumptuous beginnings that day.

We can’t be sure Niépce understood the true meaning of his experiment, or the virtual impact and direction this one singular image would take us. How could he realize how much it would change the world? It would give us a new insight as we viewed ourselves and the cosmos with a new-found permanence and record, and the wonders of nature, and the handiwork or God, would release our imagination. Memories that grow fuzzy with time and age could now be renewed, and long before the rainbow colors of Kodachrome, or the crystal clarity of digital, a new kind of art was born where balance was found in imbalance, symmetry in asymmetry...

It is propped up like an icon, illuminated by a single oblique angled spot with a darkened velvet background. Groups of observers constantly huddle around for but a glimpse into that ancient magic window. They move in unison, and at any particular moment all will see something different. One will observe a twinkle of gold, or a bejeweled glimmer in deep black, but one person, at just the right angle will see the image. It is amazing to watch a group move like a silent slow motion dance, swaying back and forth in front of it as if mesmerized. But then suddenly someone will exclaim their visual success saying: "Look, there it is! Wow!”

Since the spring of 2003, history and photography enthusiasts can see this precious 8 x 6-½ inch artifact in at the University of Texas at Austin. Scientists have poured all of their new scientific knowledge into preserving and conserving this original “heliograph.” It got a frame-mending upon arrival, and was encased in a new airtight compartment, suitable for viewing. Also, our advanced photographing techniques are bringing this special art object to life as never before.

After its rediscovery more than fifty years ago it was brought to the California Conservative Institute for study. For two weeks scientists and conservators patiently and lovingly subjected the artifact, its frame, and all supporting documents and materials to “extensive and rigorous non-destructive testing. The result was a very complete scientific and technical analysis of the object, which in turn provided better criteria for its secure and permanent case design and presentation here in the lobby of the newly-renovated Ransom Center” (The Ransom Center web page).

This analyses was a joint venture between the Image Permanence Institute at Rochester Institute of Technology and France’s Centre de Recherches sur la Conservation des Documents Graphiques. All in all, they report that the photograph is in good condition, and no price has yet to be set on its value. Though this is the first image ever to be photographed out of doors, Niepce used this same technique to reproduce engravings even earlier. One of these made in 1925 was auctioned in Paris several years ago for $443,200.

I remember my first photograph well. It was in a Naval Base in a Philippine jungle in 1969. I had taken my buddy’s Cannon with a macro lens and focused on the head of what looked to be an alien from Mars, a large Praying Mantis. I was hooked. Gary had it developed at the PX and gave me the Kodachrome slide as we walked together to the chow hall. I held it up to the sun and saw the most amazing face popping out of a narrow depth of field and knew that I would spend the rest of my life trying to capture more. At 19, that image lit a fire in me that have never gone out.

Rightly so, Niépce is now again considered the father of photography.

©Ken LaRive


"My love of writing and photography most probably come from the same place, mother’s knee. Like peanut butter and chocolate they have finally become one, with a “big bang” start in a place called L'Intrigue years ago, culminated by winning the Thunder-Rain award of 1999. It gave me the gumption to move from volumes of hidden diaries and Tupperware catalogues of pictures to a form of illustration. I have at last count, 438 publications under my belt in Southern magazines and newspapers. Seems a significant effort in retrospect; created on borrowed or stolen time from a responsible day job.

I now live in Lafayette Louisiana with my loving wife of 39 years. Now involved in Country French Antiques; traveling takes us to France and India. October years for us, I hope, these days are graced by grandchildren, Christian and Madeline, who with a hug and smile can easily fill me." ~ Ken LaRive