The interwebs (via reddit) have given some time to Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, usually considered one of the three – along with William Henry Fox Talbot and Louis-Jacques Mandé Daguerre – best known inventors (discoverers? pioneers? instigators?) of photography.

If you follow the link to the Harry Ransom Center’s The First Photograph exhibition, you’ll be treated to a relatively comprehensive history of Niépce’s involvement with the revelation of photography. Although not as tragic as poor Hippolyte Bayard, Niépce did not get to enjoy the spoils of his research and work (mostly because he died 4 years into his 10-year contract with Daguerre).

And here’s an interesting statement from an article on Niépce’s first photograph by Jim Lewis:

The quality of a photograph lies not in its subject matter but in the irreducible entanglement of photographer, apparatus, and image. The most interesting fact to contemplate is that someone had the will and the opportunity to take it at all.

Is this different that the quality of any art?