Like photography

from the 19th century

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I have long been fascinated by the origins and development of photography. Photographs are documents of the kind
“This is how it was” and show snapshots of times gone by.

I was fascinated by standing directly in front of the first “dark camera”, the photographic apparatus that was used to take the very first permanent picture in Saint-Loup-de-Varennes, which has survived to this day. Eight to nine hours of exposure time were necessary back then.

The light-sensitive plate was coated with an emulsion of asphalt, turpentine, benzene and chloroform. The development was based on lavender oil and petroleum, among other things. In this way, the weaker exposed asphalt areas, which were less hardened by the light, were dissolved out.

This first photograph by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce dates back to 1826 or 1827. This camera, which was built almost 200 years ago for the world's first surviving photograph, was ultimately nothing more than a wooden box with a single lens in front of it. I wanted to see it, so I went to the Musée Nicéphore Niépce in Chalon-sur-Saône.

With these impressions in mind, I thought about what pictures might look like today if they had been created at that time. I tried to realize various pictorial aspects that were relevant to me:

• The emulsions on the light-sensitive plates were anything but even in the early years. This led to varying degrees of blackening with the same incidence of light.

• The quality in terms of purity was very low. Irregularities, soiling and dust were visible across the entire surface.

• The emulsions were only able to reproduce a very low contrast range. Overexposures were normal in bright areas of the image.

• Ghost exposures, i.e. trans-parent extraneous lines or extraneous shadows that did not belong to the image itself, were initially visible. These occurred during the processing when the plates were removed from the camera or due to plate housings that were not completely light-tight and during the development process itself.

• Due to the very long exposure times required at the beginning, the first motifs were naturally found in architecture and landscapes. People were only added when exposure times became significantly shorter, in the region of less than a minute.

• From the second half of the 1830s, the quality very quickly improved. From then on, images could be produced almost without any of the problems mentioned above.

• Traces of external influences are always added after this long period of time. Moldy edges, traces of moisture or unwanted long-term exposure to light due to improper storage are noticeable.

• The consistency of the picture surface would normally be faded or discolored after such a long time.

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Fascinated by old French villages and courtyards, old walls, facades and landscapes, I wanted to depict and reproduce them as they might have been photographed 200 years ago.

About 200 years have passed between the first asphalt pictures and today's high-precision digital photography. What has changed is the technical quality and the technical possibilities. The images themselves have remained the same.