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Long before the first public announcements of photographic processes in 1839, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, a scientifically-minded gentleman living on his country estate near Chalon-sur-Saône, France, began experimenting with photography. Fascinated with the craze for the newly-invented art of lithography which swept over France in 1813, he began his initial experiments by 1816. Unable to draw well, Niépce first placed engravings, made transparent, onto engraving stones or glass plates coated with a light-sensitive varnish of his own composition. These experiments, together with his application of the then-popular optical instrument, the camera obscura, would eventually lead him to the invention of the new medium.

Photography The cornerstone of the photography collection is the renowned Helmut and Alison Gernsheim collection, which is best known for its treasures of nineteenth-century photography, including the world's first photograph, a unique image created in 1826 by the French inventor Joseph Nicéphore Niépce. Since that landmark acquisition, the photography collection has expanded into such diverse areas as fine art, photojournalism, documentary photography, the history of photography, and its technology. These holdings currently amount to over five million prints and negatives, supplemented by books, manuscripts, journals, and memorabilia of significant photographers since the medium's invention.

Spotlighting Human Rights: Digital Photography and Video University of California: Berkeley