We know so many important names in
history, the first human to set foot on the moon, the first person to fly solo
over the Atlantic or the first intrepid souls to reach the poles or scale Mount
Everest, but who was the first person to have their picture taken?
Having our
picture snapped is an occurrence we all take for granted. You don’t need to be
a famous fashion model to be photographed relentlessly. We’re photographed at
the DMV, entering banks and convenience stores, enjoying ourselves at sporting
events, pausing at stop lights and often just walking down the street, which
many see as a violation of privacy. Conservative estimates place the number of
photographs taken by year 2000 at an amazing 85 billion—an incredible 2,500
photos per second—and experts believe we are rapidly closing in on 3.5 trillion
photographs. But, as in all things, when it comes to having your picture taken
someone had to be first.
In
1838 Louis Daguerre, the father of modern photography, tired of taking
still-life pictures of fruit and plaster casts in the corner of his Parisian
studio. He aimed his bulky contraption out the window to shoot a photograph of
bustling Boulevard du Temple below. He held his camera as steady as he could
for ten minutes, the amount of time required for an exposure. His arms must
have ached when he finally set down his cumbersome camera. The picture Daguerre
later developed showed the boulevard just as he’d seen it. Well, not exactly;
the buildings and trees were perfectly recorded, but where were the
well-dressed couples promenading down the street? Where were the bustling
carriages and prancing horses? What happened to the street peddlers showing
their wares to young dandies out for a leisurely stroll?
Daguerre’s
picture took so long to develop that all moving things disappeared from the
scene, as if they hadn’t been there at all. Or so it seems. If you look closely
at the bottom left hand corner of the image, a man stands on the otherwise
empty street. Who is he? Had he been an astronaut or explorer we would surely
know his name. He is standing still because he is having his shoes shined—the
man doing the polishing is moving too quickly to be recorded and has blurred
into oblivion. Upwards of fifty billion pictures of people have been taken
since the perfection of photography, and this man, oblivious to the
significance of the moment, was the first. Yet we know nothing about him.
Perhaps he was someone just like you.
How many times have you paused on a sunny
day for a simple pleasure? An ice cream cone, a chat with a friend, a lingering
moment on a park bench to watch the world pass by. Haven’t we all done
these things and disregarded them as common occurrences unworthy of reflection?
Once upon a time a fellow paused to have his shoes shined.
Treasure each moment of your life
because at any moment something extraordinary can happen.
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