The First Surviving Photographs From Each Continent

The oldest surviving camera photograph is a grainy 1826 or 1827 heliograph of a French rooftop by Nicéphore Niépce. Every other continent's photographic record began later, often with images that are now lost, leaving later attempts as the earliest ones preserved.

Chasing the "first photograph" of each continent reveals a persistent problem. The true first image is usually gone, its plate polished down, lost, or discarded. What survives is often the second or third attempt, or a print from a vanished original. The historical record therefore answers two separate questions: the first photograph ever made on a continent, and the earliest one that still exists today.

Europe: A Days-Long Exposure on Pewter

Europe's first surviving photograph is Niépce's heliograph, made at his estate, Le Gras, in Saint-Loup-de-Varennes. He coated a pewter plate with light-sensitive bitumen of Judea and exposed it in a camera obscura pointed out an upper window. The exposure lasted at least many hours and possibly several days, so long that buildings appear lit from opposite directions. The plate was lost for decades before historian Helmut Gernsheim rediscovered it in 1952. The original is now held by the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin. It is not only Europe's first surviving camera photograph but the oldest in the world.

The Americas: Blurry Beginnings and Lost Plates

In North America, the first daguerreotype made in the United States was of St. Paul's Church in New York by D.W. Seager in September 1839, but that plate is lost. The oldest surviving American photograph is a tiny, soft daguerreotype of Central High School in Philadelphia, taken by Joseph Saxton from a U.S. Mint window a few weeks later. The exact date is debated between late September and October 16, 1839. That same autumn, nearby, Robert Cornelius made a self-portrait often called the first photographic self-portrait.

In South America, the first daguerreotype was made on January 17, 1840, in Rio de Janeiro by French chaplain Louis Comte. That plate does not survive. The report states that the earliest surviving camera photograph of the continent is not cleanly established. A complicating earlier record exists: a French emigre named Hercule Florence made a contact print of pharmacy labels in Brazil in 1833, coining the word "photographie" independently. This is considered the oldest surviving photographic record on the American continent, though it is not a camera-captured scene.

Asia and Africa: Survivals Through Engravings and Attics

The first photographs in Asia, taken in the Ottoman Middle East in late 1839 and 1840, are lost. They survive only as aquatint engravings in a Paris publication called Excursions Daguerriennes. The earliest surviving actual photographs of Asia have two claimants. Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey's 1844 daguerreotypes from Jerusalem are the earliest surviving photographs of Palestine, Syria, and Turkey. Separately, Jules Itier's 1844 daguerreotypes of Macau and Canton are the earliest preserved photographs of China.

Africa's story is similar. The first photographs, daguerreotypes of Egypt from November 1839, are gone. They, too, are known only through engravings in Excursions Daguerriennes. The earliest surviving photographic images of African monuments are again attributed to Girault de Prangey, from his 1842 expedition. Photography reached sub-Saharan Africa slightly later, with Itier working in Senegal in the early 1840s.

Australia and Antarctica: Portraits and Expedition Ice

Australia's first photograph, an 1841 daguerreotype of Sydney's Bridge Street by Captain Augustin Lucas, is lost. The earliest surviving Australian photograph is a portrait of surgeon William Bland, taken by the colony's first professional photographer, George Goodman, between December 1844 and January 1845. The small plate is held by the State Library of New South Wales.

Antarctica breaks the pattern. With no residents and few visitors, it had no famous lost first photograph. The first sustained photographs of the Antarctic region were made during the Belgian Antarctic Expedition aboard the ship Belgica after it became trapped in pack ice in 1898. The expedition's surgeon, an American, was among the crew who took these images.