Hippolyte Bayard

Happy Birthday Hippolyte Bayard!! French photographer, born in 1801, Bayard is considered to be one of the inventors (maybe the first) of photography. He claims to have created it before Louis-Jaques Daguerre or William Talbot, but was persuaded to hold off announcing his discovery, allowing Daguerre to be recognized instead. His process was called ”direct positive printing”, which involved a series of chemical baths resulting in an image that was not reproducible. The exposure was twelve minutes so most of his subjects were still such as buildings, landscape scenes, etc. Bayard was the first in the world to exhibit photography, in 1839. The photo included here is Paris, Montmartre, 1842.