“To photograph is to align one’s head, eye, and heart in the same line of sight.” Henri Cartier-Bresson 

On a summer morning, under a cloudless sky, the first rays of sun fell across the roofs of the small village of Saint-Loup-de-Varennes in Burgundy, a few kilometres from Chalon-sur-Saône. On the top floor of his country manor at Le Gras, a slightly stooping man opened his window and pointed the lens of a makeshift camera, assembled from odds and ends, towards the landscape that stretched out before him. This time, he knew luck was on his side, even if the device would have to remain completely still for at least eight hours. [...]. 

Ten years of experiments and trial and error followed his initial idea, with failure only strengthening his determination. It was on that historic day, 200 years ago, that he had a stroke of genius. Inside his device, he placed a pewter plate coated with Bitumen of Judea, a type of natural tar. That afternoon, he carefully removed the plate, immersing it in a bath of diluted lavender oil to dissolve the areas that had not been exposed to the light. He watched, delighted, as the image slowly appeared. [...].

This was in 1826, and a new age had just begun; one that would upend lifestyles that had, until that point, been shaped by a civilisation of the written word. On that day, in the French countryside, Nicéphore Niépce had just invented photography. 
 

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