Watches Photography experts amazed at world's first lensman's pioneering technique

Photography experts amazed at world's first lensman's pioneering technique
Analysis of Joseph Nicéphore Niépce's work reveals baked lavender oil method used in first ever camera images

Joseph Nicéphore Niépce's View from the Window at Le Gras - thought to be the world's first photograph, taken in 1826 from the window of a French farmhouse. Photograph: AP
The grey, blurred images are not exactly easy on the eye, but they are three of the world's very first photographs and, it will be announced today, were made using a range of techniques including one previously undiscovered method.

Scientists will admit that they are having to rewrite the reference books for one of photography's true pioneers, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, the man widely acknowledged as the world's first photographer.

New analysis of three of the finest examples of Niépce's work, part of the national collection of photographs at Bradford, has astonished researchers.

They have always been hugely regarded but normally described as simple etched plates of pewter, created using a process that involved bitumen. Now,the Guardian can reveal, fresh technical analysis by Dusan Stulik and Art Kaplan at the Getty Conservation Institute in Los Angeles has shown them to have been made by different photographic processes developed by Niépce. The most eye-opening is a plate called Un Clair de Lune which uses a chemical process not previously discovered; one that involved baking lavender oil to create the image.

The revelations shed new light on the early development of photography and raise Niépce's contribution even higher.

Stulik called the discoveries hugely significant. "This is something completely new in the history of photography. My eureka moment was finding that the plate was not an etched plate – we spent some time not believing what we were seeing.

"To see the whole range of experiments is absolutely amazing."

Philippa Wright, the National Media Museum's curator of photographs, recalled: "There was a moment when Dusan was looking down the microscope and he literally stopped breathing." Stulik added: "I did start breathing again."

The revelations will be made at a two-day conference on Niépce in England at the National Media Museum today and tomorrow where 120 delegates will gather from 10 countries to hear in full why the plates were brought to England and what happened to them afterwards.

The conference will hear details of recent advancements in scientific, art historical and conservation research and the three plates will be on display out of their frames – probably for the last ever time – so they can be looked at front and back.

Stulik said the research conclusions meant that even more respect is due to the French inventor, that he truly was the world's first photographer. "Our findings are shining a different light on the early history of photography than has been previously described in literature.
Coppied by http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/oct/13/photography-photography