Heliographie, Przemek Zajfert, forever-and ever, for my Sons

Essays

These texts accompany the work with light and asphalt.

They move between personal memory, historical reconstruction, and what remains when one machine sees and another forgets. Some are closely connected to specific heliographs, while others address fundamental questions of photography.

More essays on Medium →
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Rückseite des Originalrahmens der Heliografie Blick aus dem Fenster in Le Gras (1826) von Joseph Nicéphore Niépce mit den unterschiedlichen Eigentümervermerken: den handschriftlichen Notizen von Francis Bauer (1827), dem Besitzeretikett von Henry Baden Pritchard (1884) und dem Sammlungsstempel von Helmut Gernsheim. © Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin

When Was the First Photograph Taken? The Evidence for 1827
A source-critical reconstruction of the dating question

This text examines the historical evidence for the year in which Niepce’s first heliograph was made. Drawing on letters, notes, and provenance records, it reconstructs the origins of the oldest surviving photograph in the world.
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Das erste Foto, Heliographie hergestellt nach dem Verfahren von Joseph Nicéphore Niépce aus dem Jahr 1822/1826

Photography on Asphalt – Reconstructing Niepce’s First Photograph

A week-by-week account of reconstructing Niepce’s first photograph. The text follows the process from coating the plate to the finished heliograph – including every setback and discovery along the way.
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Natural asphalt from Pyrimont — the material used to create the world’s first photograph.

What Asphalt Has to Do with the First Photograph

Fifteen years of work on a single historical process. This text explains what asphalt has to do with the invention of photography – and what it means to make this material speak again today.
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Heliographie Herstellung, Lavendelöl, Bitum Internegativ

When Light Meets Asphalt – Heliographs for My Sons

Heliographs as personal documents: this text connects the technical process to a deeply private gesture – images that form slowly, as a substitute for words that cannot be spoken.
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Niépce-Correspondance et papiers

The Story of the First Photograph – How Niepce’s Lost Image of 1824 Explains Our Present

The lost photograph of 1824 — Niepce produced photographs three years before his famous image. This text asks what this disappeared picture tells us about the origins of photography and about our present.
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Joseph Nicéphore Niépce: “View from the Window at Le Gras” (1827). The world’s first permanent photograph. Collection: Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin.

From the First Photograph to Digital Simulation – A Journey Through the Image Worlds of Memory

From Niepce’s pewter plate to digital simulation: this text traces how the image as a medium has changed – and what has been lost in the process. A journey through image worlds that each tell us something about memory and forgetting.
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The Spectrum of the Real Indexicality, Authorship, and the Limits of Photographic Knowledge, Heliography Project 1827–2027

The Spectrum of the Real – Indexicality, Authorship, and the Limits of Photographic Knowledge, Heliography Project 1827-2027

A theoretical text on indexicality and authorship in photography. Starting from the Heliography Project, the text asks what a photograph proves — and where the limits of photographic knowledge lie.
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The Beginning, The pyramids and the pen, Heliography Project 1827–2027 Heliography “The Beginning, The pyramids and the pen”, Google Street View Photo – Great Pyramid of Cheops, June 2013. Handcrafted on aluminum with Niépce’s original 1822–1827 process using Bitume de Judée. Unique collector’s artwork.

Photography is Dead – Long Live the Image: Google Street View and the last true photographs

Google Street View as the last indexical image medium: this text argues that automatically generated machine images are the only truly authentic photographs remaining — and what the Heliography Project has to do with this.
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A Conversation About an Old Photograph Before my mother’s memory fades, I’m writing down what the pictures cannot show

A Conversation About an Old Photograph

A personal text about memory, forgetting, and the limits of the photograph. Written before his mother’s memory fades completely — and about what images cannot show.
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A Photograph That Ages With Me

A Photograph That Ages With Me

On the transience of images and people: if skin ages, why should a photograph remain unchanged? A short, concentrated text on time, the body, and the photographic image.
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What We Think We Capture in Photographs

What We Think We Capture in Photographs – On language, time, and why a photograph tells us more about absence than presence

On language, time, and what a photograph really shows. The text argues that photographs tell us more about absence than presence — and what this means for our understanding of images.
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The Complete Essay Archive (English Publications)

Since the free exchange of ideas on art and photographic theory is important to me, I am happy to share my texts with you personally. The following essays were originally published behind a paywall. If you would like to read a specific text, simply send me a short message with the title you are interested in. I will gladly send you a personal, complimentary friend link for free access.

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  • Photography Archives in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
  • When an Algorithm Decided I Wasn’t Me
  • The Death of a Project
  • How much of a photograph is actually yours?
  • The Chair Is Still There. The Woman Is Gone.
  • When Was the First Photograph Taken? The Evidence for 1827
  • The Eighth Day — Easter and the Riddle That Remains
  • No Lens. No Viewfinder. Only Time: Photographs That Take Minutes or Hours
  • A Face That Never Existed — And Why That Matters More Than You Think
  • He Survived Auschwitz. He Survived Mauthausen. He Died Days After Liberation.
  • The Spectrum of the Real
  • One Photograph. One Year. Nothing Else.
  • What We Could Never See: How Photography Changed Our Perception of Reality
  • The Darkroom as Shelter
  • What We Think We Capture in Photographs
  • Camera Obscura — Photographs Exposed for an Entire Year
  • Three Photographic Miniatures: Memory, Time, and Objects
  • The Road
  • Darkroom as Shelter, Ritual, and Salvation
  • A Forest in My Lungs
  • One Hour of Exposure: Experiencing the Pandemic
    Eternity
  • Photography is Dead — Long Live the Image
  • Black Box
  • Grandpa
  • Silver and Photography: How Old Photographic Paper Becomes Living Art
  • The Drawer
  • Hallucinarium-Resonance Space
  • I Opened the Envelope with the Results
  • A Conversation About an Old Photograph
  • The Photographer
  • Prayer
  • Photography on Asphalt
  • Moon Landing
  • A Photograph That Ages With Me
  • Why Banksy’s $200,000 Art Sold for Only $60 on the Street
  • When Light Meets Asphalt
  • Photography and Time — Tomorrow a New Year Will Begin
  • What Asphalt Has to Do with the First Photograph
    Christmas and a New Year
  • The Smallest Aperture Reveals the Strangest Truth of Light
  • Pinhole Camera and the Solar Eclipse
  • My Adventure with a Pinhole Camera
  • The Beautiful Simultaneity
  • From the First Photograph to Digital Simulation
  • How a Bird and a Spider Created the World’s Longest Exposure Photograph
  • No Words — The Darkroom as Shelter