From: Eric Nelson (emanmb@yahoo.com)
Date: 03/13/02-03:57:52 PM Z
Oldest Known Photograph to Undergo Analysis
Scientific Experts Will Analyze 1826 Photo for First
Time Since Authentication in 1952
By ANDREW BRIDGES
.c The Associated Press
LOS ANGELES (March 13) - One summer morning, Joseph
Nicephore Niepce peered from an upstairs window in his
home in the French countryside, framed the view of a
pear tree, the sky and several farm buildings and did
something remarkable: He took a picture.
Opening the lens of a rudimentary camera for eight
hours that day in 1826, Niepce exposed a polished,
thinly varnished pewter plate to produce an image that
is acknowledged as the world's first photograph.
In June, 176 years later, the faint image will arrive
at The Getty Conservation Institute, where scientific
experts will analyze it for the first time since it
was rediscovered and authenticated in 1952. Before it
turned up, the photo had been missing for decades,
misplaced by its owner after it was last exhibited in
1898.
Exact details of its chemistry remain a mystery,
leaving experts with precious little information about
the science behind the photo.
''There are legends about how it was done and with
what materials, but no one really knows,'' said Dusan
Stulik, a Getty senior scientist who calls the work
the ''Mona Lisa'' of the photo world.
The analysis is part of a joint photo conservation
project involving Getty, the Image Permanence
Institute at the Rochester Institute of Technology and
France's Centre de Recherches sur la Conservation des
Documents Graphiques.
The goal is to understand all the chemical processes
used since Niepce's day to produce photographs, which
conservators say is essential to preserve the art
form.
During the 8-by-6.5-inch photograph's two-week stay in
Los Angeles, scientists will study it with advanced
scientific instruments, assess its state of
preservation and construct a new airtight case.
In 2003, it will go on display again at the University
of Texas at Austin's Harry Ransom Humanities Research
Center, its home since 1964.
Conservators have a theory about how Niepce's
photograph was produced. They believe light hardened
the bitumen, a petroleum derivative sensitive to light
that Niepce (pronounced NEE-yeps) used to coat the
plate. Washing the plate with a mixture of oil of
lavender and white petroleum dissolved the unexposed
portions of bitumen.
The result was a permanently fixed, direct positive
picture - the first ever captured from nature. Niepce
called his work a ''heliograph,'' in a tribute to the
power of the sun.
''What we are so familiar with today in terms of
images and being able to snap pictures, this is where
it all began,'' said Barbara Brown, who will accompany
the artifact to California as head of photographic
conservation at the Ransom Center.
In the Getty Institute's laboratories, scientists will
use spectrometers to determine the photograph's
chemical makeup. They hope to discover what substances
Niepce may have used to enhance the bitumen's
properties.
Using a digital microscope, they plan to map the
image's surface in detail. Multispectral imaging will
look for oxidation that could threaten the photograph.
Meanwhile, conservators will repair the gilt frame.
And experts will try to photograph the work, an almost
impossible chore because the image is so faint and can
be seen only at oblique angles.
All the methods will be quick, reliable and
noninvasive, said Herant Khanjian, an assistant
scientist at the Getty.
Stulik, the Getty senior scientist, said he fears the
days of traditional, nondigital photography are
numbered, making the need to understand its chemistry
- from Niepce to Polaroid - all the more pressing.
Ultimately, he said, advances in digital photography
may do for its chemical counterpart what the printing
press did to the handwritten manuscript in the 1400s.
''It ended it,'' Stulik said.
AP-NY-03-13-02 0229EST
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