This is one of the, if not the, oldest known photograph of…
This is one of the, if not the, oldest known photograph of a human being in existence. It depends on how one defines photograph, but this was taken by Louis Jacques-Mande Daguerre in 1838. This is a photo of the Boulevard du Temple in Paris. This is a busy street and there was tons of traffic, but since the exposure was so long, about 15-20 minutes, none of the moving figures can be seen. The only people visible are a guy getting his boots polished and the bootblack. Who was this nameless gentleman or the bootblack? No one knows. I’m sure they never imagined that they had been immortalized, albeit anonymously, by a clever scientist testing his newly discovered method of preserving moments in time.