{"id":671898,"date":"2026-11-01T16:18:11","date_gmt":"2026-11-01T16:18:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/671898\/"},"modified":"2026-11-01T16:18:11","modified_gmt":"2026-11-01T16:18:11","slug":"paris-marks-the-precise-spot-where-the-first-humans-were-photographed-and-its-not-where-you-might-think","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/671898\/","title":{"rendered":"Paris marks the precise spot where the first humans were photographed, and it\u2019s not where you might think"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The bronze plaque titled “An Unexpected Detail” at Place de la R\u00e9publique in Paris. It honors “Boulevard du Temple,” an image taken in 1838 by French photography pioneer Louis Daguerre, considered to be the first photograph to show people. (Image credit: Alamy)<\/p>\n

The project, titled An Unexpected Detail, was led by filmmaker and producer Maximilien Van Aertryck and his Swedish colleagues Axel Danielson and Kalle Boman, in collaboration with the City of Paris. And it ties in nicely with France\u2019s current celebrations of 200 years of photography<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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It turns out that Daguerre\u2019s studio and his theater, the Diorama, overlooked the boulevard in question. Back then, exposures took between five and 10 minutes, so the carts and crowds on the busy boulevard didn\u2019t register on the plate\u2026 other than these two people.<\/p>\n

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Where and when?<\/p>\n

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\"An\n<\/p>\n

Detail from Daguerre’s photograph showing the man having his shoes cleaned by a street trader (Image credit: Louis Daguerre (public domain))<\/p>\n

According to Van Aertryck, the picture was taken at 8am, and Daguerre photographed the same view at noon and in the evening. Van Aertryck told Radio France he believes the shoeshine boy to be a child of between 12 and 15.<\/p>\n

So where was it taken? The answer surprised even the experts. Previous estimates had placed the photo near the Filles du Calvaire M\u00e9tro station. But it’s actually in today\u2019s Place de la R\u00e9publique \u2013 a square in Paris on the border between the 3rd, 10th and 11th arrondissements \u2013 which didn\u2019t yet exist in 1838. Georges-Eug\u00e8ne Haussmann (1809\u20131891), the official who rebuilt much of Paris in the mid-19th century, later demolished much of the area to create the square.<\/p>\n

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The story has another twist. The original daguerreotype survives, but its image is almost entirely gone. Daguerre sent it to the King of Bavaria in 1839, and it ended up in the Bavarian National Museum in Munich. Unfortunately it was badly damaged during the Second World War, and a restoration attempt in 1970 was a failure.<\/p>\n

The version of the image shown above comes from a photograph of the plate commissioned in 1937 by Beaumont Newhall, the photography historian at MoMA in New York. And that’s not all. The image has actually been flipped: in the original daguerreotype, the two men were on the bottom right.<\/p>\n

The new plaque is set into the sidewalk in place of two concrete slabs. One half tells the story of the image, and the other shows a detail of the shoeshine boy and his customer. Van Aertryck hopes visitors will make it their own. So if you\u2019re ever in the Place de la R\u00e9publique, be sure look down, and know that you’re in a place where two people made history \u2013 even if they didn’t realise it at the time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter The famous image…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":671899,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[307,304,305,306,308,93,61,60],"class_list":["post-671898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=671898"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671898\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/671899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=671898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=671898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=671898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}