{"id":389592,"date":"2026-01-05T18:19:14","date_gmt":"2026-01-05T18:19:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/389592\/"},"modified":"2026-01-05T18:19:14","modified_gmt":"2026-01-05T18:19:14","slug":"france-plans-to-mark-200-years-of-photography-in-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/389592\/","title":{"rendered":"France Plans to Mark 200 Years of Photography in 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"ANic\u00e9phore Ni\u00e9pce, left, and the photograph he took circa 1826. <\/p>\n

To mark the 200th anniversary of the world\u2019s oldest surviving photograph, France is holding the Bicentennial of Photography, a series of events to celebrate the medium. There will be exhibitions, festivals, fairs, lectures, and much more across the course of 2026 and 2027<\/p>\n

The celebrations start just next week at the Grand Palais in Paris with a free event titled \u2018200 years of history, paper, ink and debate,\u2019 offering a journey through archives, techniques, and emblematic images of photography. There are plenty of events still to be announced, including at the Nic\u00e9phore Ni\u00e9pce Museum. <\/p>\n

\u201cBy celebrating photography\u2019s birth, we aim to develop, support, and promote exhibitions and meet-ups nationwide, in urban and rural areas, by awarding labels to selected projects,\u201d the Miniset\u00e8re De La Culture says in a statement. <\/p>\n

\u201cThese events will be featured on an interactive, vibrant map, allowing the public to discover and appreciate photographic masterpieces spanning from the 19th century to the present.\u201d <\/p>\n

Under the guidance of the Centre national des arts plastiques, a ministry that promotes visual arts, there will be a call for projects that \u201creinvent photography\u201d \u2014 a lucky few will receive financial support to pursue their work. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt will establish a framework for examining contemporary practices, emerging technical and artistic possibilities, the dangers of their misuse, and the challenges posed by artificial imagery, which is now viewed as both an advancement and a threat to human roles,\u201d adds the ministry. <\/p>\n

Why 2026? <\/p>\n

The world\u2019s oldest surviving photograph, View from the Window at Le Gras<\/a>, was taken by Nic\u00e9phore Ni\u00e9pce in Chalon-sur-Sa\u00f4ne in either 1826 or 1827. It is an extremely hazy, abstract image of Ni\u00e9pce\u2019s estate that required an eight-hour exposure and a bitumen-coated pewter plate. What is truly amazing about it is that it can still be viewed to this day in Austin at the University of Texas.<\/p>\n

In a previous article<\/a>, PetaPixel explained that View from the Window at Le Gras is not the first photograph ever taken, but the first one to be permanently fixed. <\/p>\n

A few years after he took View from the Window at Le Gras, Ni\u00e9pce began working with Louis Daguerre as the two tried to invent a better method of permanently fixing an image. Ni\u00e9pce died in 1833, but Daguerre continued the work and in 1839 presented the daguerreotype process, which became the world\u2019s first mass photography method. <\/p>\n

For further details on France\u2019s bicentennial of photography, head to the Une Image Pour R\u00eaver website<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nic\u00e9phore Ni\u00e9pce, left, and the photograph he took circa 1826. To mark the 200th anniversary of the world\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":389593,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[228,226,227,229,88,594,181444,127806,189203,189204,593],"class_list":{"0":"post-389592","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-design","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-france","14":"tag-historyofphotography","15":"tag-invention","16":"tag-louisdaguerre","17":"tag-nicephoreniepce","18":"tag-paris"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=389592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389592\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/389593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=389592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=389592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=389592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}