The earliest known photograph to include a recognizable human form was taken in Paris in 1838 by Louis Daguerre. The street would have been busy with people and horse traffic, but due to the 10 minute exposure time anything moving was not captured except for the people seen on the street corner.

12 comments
  1. And 183 years later they are being looked at, who were they? How did their lives carry on from this moment? We will never know.

  2. These daguerreotype are impressively well defined from what one would naively expect from such early photographs.
    It was complex and demanding to set up, though

  3. An incredible photograph – always used it in my media course. The two people captured on the street corner are due to one of them getting his shoes shined. BTW, there are “ghosts’ of others who stood in some of the windows long enough to reflect some light but not long enough to be fully photographed.

    As for the shoeshine guy as the first person ever photographed, it’s an amazing moment in history – of which he was totally unaware. I always wonder if the same is happening to us – that we are being captured in ways that we are completely unaware only to be rediscovered by someone in the future.

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