Born in Chalon-sur-Saône, rue de l’Oratoire on March 7, 1765, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, in the family home at Saint-Loup-de-Varennes, invents a wooden photographic camera admittedly rather primitive fitted with an iris diaphragm, and succeeds in fixing the first photographic image in the world. It is a somewhat negative image, obtained through the action of light, on a polished tin plate measuring 20 × 16 centimeters. Coated with bitumen of Judea; its name: « point de vue du Gras ».
During the Restoration, in May 1826, Niépce begins to speak of his heliographic research, but it is only in December 1827 that he finally decides to give his invention the name Héliographie.
After working in collaboration with Louis Daguerre, the famous Burgundian Nicéphore Niépce dies at the age of 68, at home in Saint-Loup-de Varennes on July 5, 1833; he therefore will never know the extraordinary worldwide development of his invention.
In fact, the heliographic plate will lie dormant for many years at the bottom of a trunk! It is after numerous twists and turns that a true treasure hunt begins. To prove Niépce’s invention to the world, it is absolutely necessary to find this first photograph of 1827.
The Treasure Hunt.
In 1946, a photographer and historian named Helmut Gernsheim, then traveling in England, discovers that Nicéphore on a visit to his sick brother Claude in London left his work there… then, not knowing its historical value, the famous plate passed through the hands of various owners. It was only on February 14, 1952, after very extensive research, that Helmut Gernsheim discovered Niépce’s Héliographie 125 years after its invention and the heliograph in question was still in perfect condition!
On May 17, 1952, the magazine Paris Match ran the headline: We have just found the first photograph in the world: it is French.
Today this first heliograph an image that remains to this day unique is carefully preserved in the United States, in the Gernsheim collection, at the University of Texas, Austin.
Imagine! It is exhibited and presented in a helium container, a rare gas that protects it from any corrosion and from darkening. A wonder, a treasure!
L’héritage à Chalon sur Saône, d’un riche et précieux patrimoine photographique français.
To celebrate in France, properly and as it should be, the upcoming bicentenary of the birth of Photography and especially here, in its Burgundian cradle the Nicéphore Niépce Museum is legitimately on the front line. But will this municipal institution, during the period of these festivities, truly benefit from all the means necessary to host the first photograph ever made in the world, « Point de vue du Gras », in Saint-Loup-de-Varennes?
For months, perhaps even longer… tough negotiations are needed with the United States to allow this icon to come to France and thus to the Niépce Museum in Chalon. An image that must, of course, be under high technical protection and we can already imagine it: it is a real undertaking!
Indeed, the Nicéphore Niépce Museum, of national stature, has municipal status. It was created 50 years ago and has offered free admission since 1974. Its mission: to collect, archive and protect millions of photographic prints, plates, negatives, old cameras, and the most diverse photographic equipment. Every year, since its beginnings, this cultural institution organizes and presents to the public remarkable exhibitions, important and varied. Today, 35 people work there and devote their time to sharing their passion.
But the problem is that for quite some time now (we’re talking thirty years), this museum has no longer been large enough nor truly equipped to envision its future anew, and to enable a necessary and indispensable evolution in the positive sense of the term.
For 25 years, successive mayors, of all political stripes, have all promised the museum’s staff as well as the volunteers (162 to date) of the Société des Amis du musée Niépce to transfer and, one day, move the museum to a larger, better designed site in order to carry out the missions essential to conserving this rich and unique heritage of images, most often silver-based.
Mission of the association: Society of Friends of the Nicéphore Niépce Museum.
“The Société des Amis du musée Nicéphore Niépce brings together all those who are interested in the museum and in its artistic and scientific activities. Its purpose is to make Niépce’s work, the history of photography, and the museum’s collections better known; to enrich the collections as far as possible through gifts, subscriptions (complementary to acquisitions made by the municipality) and donations made directly to the Museum.
It also pursues a cultural aim by organizing events such as lectures, screenings, colloquia, seminars, workshops, excursions, trips, and exhibitions intended to broaden its members’ knowledge in the cultural and photographic fields.”
It also plays an important role in the bookshop and in publishing works about photography.
What does the future hold for this municipal museum with a national mission?
As of today, nothing very new is visible on the horizon. The dedicated staff, as well as the volunteers who all devote their time to keeping Photography the eighth art alive under good conditions, no longer believe in it. In the end, they tell themselves that these people in high places have, one after another, told them stories that are not photographic.
Of course, we know today that everyone connected to the cultural sector is questioning their future and, as here, when it comes to passing on our photographed life stories, it is not very reassuring.
The first photograph in the world, however, still exists, 200 years after its invention made by a Frenchman, and what’s more, a Burgundian from Chalon.
Will we be able to see this iconic heliograph one day in the museum that bears the prestigious name of its inventor? Who knows, perhaps!
Now it is more than essential: there is real urgency to transform this museum, for the memory of Nicéphore Niépce but also for a city like Chalon, a great region like Bourgogne–Franche-Comté, France, and the world!
https://www.museeniepce.com/index.php?/musee/presentation/Presentation-Photographie
Jacques Revon
Honorary journalist, author, photographer.
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Revon
