Le plus ancien tirage photographique existant aujourd'hui aurait été réalisé entre le 4 juin et le 18 juillet 1827. Connue sous le nom de "Point de vue de la fenêtre du Gras", elle a été prise par Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, un inventeur français.

À l'âge de 51 ans, en 1816, Niépce se lance dans la recherche d'un procédé chimique capable de fixer une image. Il expérimente différents produits chimiques sensibles à la lumière. 

Il travaille avec une "chambre noire" (camera obscura), qui consiste en une boîte sombre, qui peut être allongée ou raccourcie, précurseur d'un "soufflet", afin de focaliser une image projetée par une petite ouverture à l'avant de la boîte sur une feuille de papier qu'il place à l'arrière de la boîte. 

The earliest photographic print which exists today is thought to have been taken between the 4^th of June and the 18^th of July of 1827. Known as "Point de vue de la fenêtre du Gras" (“The View from the Window at Le Gras”), it was taken by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, a French inventor.

At the age of 51, in 1816, Niépce begins a quest to find a chemical process capable of fixing an image. He experiments with different light sensitive chemicals.

He worked with a “chambre noire” (camera obscura), which consists of a darkened box, which can be elongated or shortened, the precursor of a “bellow”, in order to focus an image projected from a small opening in the front of the box onto a sheet of paper which he would place at the back of the box.  

In May of 1816, Niépce addressed a letter to his brother including two images he had made. However, because they had not been “fixed”, they faded in light. It would take another 11 years of experimentation until he was able to produce the image we know today as "Point de vue de la fenêtre du Gras". This image would have taken two days to expose. Other images were made around this time although this is the only known print to have been preserved.

As of 1830, Niépce began a collaboration with Louis Daguerre, then a painter and a set designer for theatre. They embarked on numerous experiments, which in 1832 lead to a new process known as the physautotype. A technique not requiring fixing, allowing for the exposure of an image onto a sheet of glass or silver, but still necessitating an exposure of 3 to 8 hours.

Joseph Nicéphore Niépce would die the year after. Louis Daguerre continues his pursuits in photography. By 1835 he develops the daguerréotype. The exposure time was reduced to less than 30 minutes. A copper plate covered in silver was made light sensitive by exposing it to iodine vapors. Then by exposing the plate to mercury vapors a positive image was achieved. The image was then fixed in a bath of Sodium Hyposulfite.

By 1839, developments in the process reduced the exposure time to minutes, and the resulting image became clearer and more detailed. In early January of that year, the daguerréotype was announced to the public. It became the first commercially viable photographic process. This is generally accepted as the birth year of practical photography.

On the other side of the channel, an inventor named William Henry Fox Talbot was working on his own process. On January 25^th 1839, William Henry Fox Talbot presented several paper photographs he had made in 1835 to the Royal Institution. Within a few weeks he would share his process with the Royal Society. His early photographs used paper which was sensitised with silver chloride. Areas exposed to light in the camera would then become dark. Known as a “printing out” process, the image had to be exposed until it was fully visible on the paper, requiring an exposure of an hour or more.

By 1840, Talbot revised this technique with a “developing out” process. An exposure time of one or two minutes in bright sunlight was sufficient to expose the paper which would then be chemically developed to reveal the whole image.

In 1841, Talbot would introduce this process to the public as the calotype. The exposure made in camera produced a negative which would be placed on a light sensitive sheet of paper and exposed to light producing a positive contact print. Numerous prints could be made from the same negative. This differed from the Daguerréotype which was only reproduceable by rephotographing the plate in camera.

The daguerreotype remained the most popularly used process even after the introduction of the calotype, even though the Calotype was more flexible and easier to use. This was the result of the patent which Fox Talbot had on the Calotype process in England and wherever the patent was applicable. Whereas Daguerre had received a subsidy from the French government for allowing his process to be made public and had not patented it. The calotypes remained popular in the United Kingdom, and on the European continent outside of France in the 1850’s.  

In 1851, Frederick Scott Archer published a new process, the collodion process. He developed this process in 1848. Gustave le Gray, published a theory on this process in 1850. The collodion process involved exposing onto a glass plate, also known as the “collodion wet plate process”. This combined the quality of the Daguerréotype, with the reproducibility of the Calotype.

The process had to be completed within about fifteen minutes, from coating and sensitising the plate, to developing it. This meant transporting a portable darkroom to wherever the images where being made. A “dry” form existed of the collodion process, although it necessitated much longer exposure times, more suited to landscape photography. The collodion process was commonly used for decades.

In the 1870’s, a process known as “gelatin dry plates” replaced for the most part the collodion process. It was invented by Dr. Richard Leach Maddox in 1871. This process involved glass plates covered in silver halides, suspended in gelatin, a photographic emulsion. This made the process much more convenient, as well as greatly reducing exposure times.

The process would continue to be refined. In 1884, George Eastman, of Rochester New York, developed a technique involving dry gel on paper, or film. He began experiments to replace photographic plates with roll film. In 1885 he obtained a patent for roll film. He then began working on a camera which could use this film. In 1888, under the name Kodak, Eastman released a camera loaded with roll film, which could take up to 100 photographs. Once the film was exposed, it would be sent to Kodak to be processed, prints would be made, a new roll of film would be loaded, and the prints and camera were sent back to the photographer.

In February of 1900, photography became available to the mass market with a series of cameras known as the Kodak Brownie. By 1904, Eastman began funding research in colour film. In 1913, the first Kodachrome was invented. In 1935, Kodak released the second Kodachrome, to great popular success.

Eastman focused the company’s interests in film production, partnering with camera manufacturers, providing them quality and affordable film.

Film photography would dominate the photographic process throughout the century.

The first steps in digital photography were in the 1950’s, when the first digital signals were saved to magnetic tape. In 1957, the first digital image was made with a computer.

It wouldn’t be until the early 21^st century that digital photography would become accessible to the general public.

In May of 1999, the first camera phone was introduced by Kyocera in Japan.