First Times / First Photos

What is a first image? A proof? A test? An achievement? A failure? An event? A memento, or perhaps a spark? A playful and erudite journey through two hundred years of major and minor photographic innovations, this book is a collection of “firsts.” Snapshots, scoops, images that have never been seen before, unpublished photos, “front-page” pictures, the oldest image, and so on — these “firsts” are technical, aesthetic, scientific, and societal in nature, ranging from the first experiments conducted by photography’s pioneers to recent images of stars being born in the primordial universe, from the first remotely transmitted pictures to the first louse in the history of photography. At the heart of the book, photographers tell of their first photo, while shots of “firsts,” both great and small, recall the connection between photography and the cult of the new.

Luce Lebart is a photo historian and exhibition curator.

Design by Lyosha Kritsouk.