Did France invent photography? Yes: Nicéphore, two hundred years ago. Perhaps two hundred and one.
| Did France invent photography? Yes: Nicéphore, two hundred years ago. Perhaps two hundred and one.
No images? Click here Toward a Catalogue Raisonné of
the Heliographs of Nicéphore Niépce
Partita Doppia, special issue, Ognissanti 2026 Did France invent photography? In a house near Chalon-sur-Saône, he laid a varnished print on a metal plate, left it in the sun, and found that light could engrave. He had no word yet for what he did; “héliographie” came only in 1826. Much of what he made has been lost, broken, misdated, or labelled by others. This special issue tries to count what remains.
It records thirty-three objects for sixteen compositions: the source prints Niépce made translucent, the plates he etched to be printed, the plates meant only to be looked at, and the impressions pulled in his lifetime. Each is numbered in a system designed to survive its own corrections.The order follows the letters, read in Saint Petersburg and again in the edition of Manuel Bonnet and Jean-Louis Marignier, and the objects themselves: pinholes in a corner, the direction of an image, the shrinking of damp paper, the antimony in two pewter plates.
The issue will be presented at Paris Photo, Grand Palais, 12-15 November 2026, stand D50, alongside the Jeune Fille à la quenouille, one of the three earliest surviving heliographic prints.English edition, 100 numbered copies, €40. An Italian edition will follow within a month. Printed by Tipografia Adriatica, Senigallia.
Payment by PayPal to the same address: please add 5% unless you send it as “Friends and Family”. Reserved copies can be collected at the stand, or sent after the fair, at the post office’s cruel rates. Serge Plantureux La Fotografia antica è la più bella delle collezioni … Senigallia, città della fotografia, prepara la V Biennale di Storia della Fotografia di Senigallia, estate 2027, conferenza, fiera: 18-20 giugno 2027. Senigallia diventerà la Città delle collezioni.
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