Asphalt Works – Miniatures. Everyday life. I expose the internegatives with the sun on a metal...
Asphalt Works – Miniatures
Everyday life. I expose the internegatives with the sun on a metal plate coated with asphalt so as not to forget.
Heliography process by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, developed between 1822 and 1826 – the invention of photography.
Niépce was originally looking for a process that would enable him to produce copies of copperplate prints. He succeeded in doing so in 1822 with an engraving of Cardinal Georges d’Amboise. Niépce coated a polished tin plate with a varnish of Syrian asphalt dissolved in lavender oil. On this tin plate coated in this way, he placed the copperplate (which had previously been made transparent with a varnish). He exposed the plate to sunlight for several hours.
However, this image is not considered the first photograph, as it was not taken with a camera obscura.
After further elaborate experiments, he then succeeded in taking the world’s first light-resistant photograph in Saint-Loup-de-Varennes in the early fall of 1826: a view from the window of his study in the Le Gras estate with an exposure time of several days and a format of 16.5 × 21 cm.
In his “Notice sur l’héliographie” written in 1829, Niépce describes these two processes for generating photographic images. Both image processes were summarized under the term “heliography”, which translated means “drawing with the sun”.