Heliograph- dun dun dunnnnn

There once was a man from france, with paper and light he did prance, to capture the first scape of land, only to destroy it by his own hand. real talk.

Joseph Niepce produced the first known "photograph". He called his method of capturing his images Heliographs, which litereally means Sun Writing. This guy worked from 1793 (when he successfully mixed Bitume with a chemical popular in use of varnish for his time, and did produce an image, but that image would decompose almost immediately) up until 1825 when he had perfected the art of preserving the heliographs he produced.

See, the unfortunate thing about "The very first photo ever created" is that it was also the very first photo ever destroyed. Joseph Niepce had a successful photo before the release of View from the Window at Le Gras, but as brilliant as he was, his common sense got the best of him and instead of waiting to experiment in manipulation with later photograpghs, he used his very first. But we do still have the runner up! Ah the one that survived. And here it is, the moment you've all been waiting for, the first photograph that ever survived, View from the Window at Le Gras.

we also learned about this is photography class. I'm just lending you a crash course yo.