Niépce (December)

[Six of seven in B&W] The first photograph, that has survived, is of that form beloved of French artists, the roofscape. It was taken in 1826 or 1827, let’s say December, to remind us that cities like Melbourne exist entirely inside the photographic age. The image was made on lithographic stone coated in bitumen that was dissolved in lavender oil. Through the murk we discern not a face or natural shape, but geometry. Nicéphore Niépce was behind it all, or ahead of it all, coating it all, it an end product of other experiments he called heliography, or ‘sun drawing’.