This is the first staged photo.
It depicts a suicide.
But it also tells a story.
Of an ambitious amateur inventor who found a way to achieve the incredible.
But was pushed aside by a powerful, meddling politician with his own agenda.
And doomed to obscurity.
Hippolyte Bayard was an artist.
A gardener.
A collector.
And an experimenter.
And in 1839, he invented photography – sort of.
People knew for centuries how to create an image with light, but they didn’t have a
way to permanently fix it onto a surface.
Until several people actually figured it out all at once.
They invented their own methods, building on years of individual experimentation and
failed attempts.
Bayard, in France, was one of them.
He was experimenting with photography in his free time while working a day job
in a government office.
He found a way to fix images by dipping paper into photosensitive chemicals and exposing
it to light inside a camera obscura, which is essentially a dark room with a tiny hole
in it.
You can actually see stains from excess chemicals in his earliest successful attempts.
His photographs prominently featured his home and garden,
where he would arrange tools, statues, and vases into loaded still lifes.
Also windmills.
He loved windmills.
Often he included himself in the scenes, eyes closed because of the long exposure time his
process required.
But he’s not the photo pioneer you might have heard of.
That would be this guy: fellow Frenchman Louis Daguerre.
Daguerre had already made a name for himself and captured the public’s attention in the
1820s with popular interactive art shows, called “dioramas.”
Fixing an image to a surface was his next big ambition.
And by the late 1830s, he’d had his own breakthrough with photography, successfully
creating a process to fix an image to a metal plate.
He called his invention the Daguerreotype.
He kept his discovery mostly under wraps, showing the Daguerreotypes to just a few influential
members of society, who would then spread rumors of his success to the press.
Bayard, on the other hand, worked alone, but he was eager to share his work.
In June 1839 he held a photo exhibition, becoming the first photographer to show his work in public.
One attendee later wrote, “they were like nothing I’d ever seen… they unite the
impression of reality with the fantasy of dreams.”
Bayard was prepared to demonstrate his process to the Academy of Sciences, the highest scientific
authority in France.
And that’s where Francois Arago steps in.
A prominent French politician and astronomer, and Chair of the Academy of Sciences.
He was also a supporter of Daguerre's, and after being shown successful Daguerreotypes
in late 1838, he set out to arrange a deal with the French government to purchase the
rights to the invention.
He wanted photography to be France’s gift to the world, and Daguerre was going to be
the man to deliver it.
So when Bayard showed Arago his successful prints, the politician persuaded him to hold
off on announcing the details of his method until the Daguerre deal was finished.
And on August 19th, 1839, standing before the Academy of Sciences with Daguerre seated
right next to him, Francois Arago revealed the exact process for creating a Daguerreotype.
That moment is considered the birth of photography.
And once the French government made the details of the process public, Daguerreotyping spread
like wildfire, becoming the first practical, widespread method of making pictures.
Daguerre was awarded a lifetime government pension, and the principle credit for inventing
photography — sealing his place in the history books.
A couple months later, Bayard finally got his chance with the Academy and demonstrated
his own process.
But it was too late.
Daguerreotyping was already established, and the Academy wasn’t interested in pursuing
his alternative technique.
And as a response, Bayard killed himself.
Well, metaphorically.
The tongue-in-cheek caption he wrote on the back of this self-portrait reads:
“The corpse which you see here is that of Monsieur Bayard, inventor of the process that
has just been shown to you.”
“The government which has been only too generous to Monsieur Daguerre, has said it
can do nothing for Monsieur Bayard, and the poor wretch has drowned himself.”
The image itself is rich with symbols that Bayard included to hint at his perceived injustice.
First, he posed nude, partially covered in a shroud,
a symbol people would have recognized from iconic paintings depicting martyrs.
Another important detail that would have resonated with 19th century Parisians is in the caption:
“He has been at the morgue for several days, and no-one has recognized or claimed him.”
The Paris Morgue at this time was open every day to the public, in hopes that people would
claim unidentified bodies — many of them anonymous suicides.
Bayard’s protest is all about recognition – or lack thereof – so the morgue is a
fitting metaphor.
Just like morgue victims, he’s on display – propped up and surrounded by personal
effects that might give a clue to the corpse’s identity.
In Bayard’s case, a broad-brimmed straw hat
and, as a second attempt at the photo shows more clearly, a floral vase and a statue.
Objects that, along with the inventor himself, were recurring visual themes in his work
and would have been strong indicators of the identity of the drowned man,
should anyone recognize them, or him, at all.
Bayard went on experimenting with photography in the years following his “suicide”
and even became a founding member of the French Society of Photography.
But of the many photographs taken over his long career, it’s this one that is the most
talked about and analyzed.
And that’s because this isn’t just the first staged photo – it’s an early example
of photography showing something non-literal and symbolic.
Laying the groundwork for exploring the medium’s potential for creative expression
and establishing from the very beginning that a photograph doesn’t always show the truth.
If you want to check out more of Bayard's photographs, or see some of the research that informed this video,
there's links to that in the description.
I'll also be sharing some sources that I used for inspiration and story ideas in the
Video Lab, our membership program.
Head on over to vox.com/join or click the link in the description to find out more about that.
Thanks for watching.