Daguerreotype

Not the most impressive at first glance, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce's photograph from the window at Le Gras, with its blurred shadow-shapes of trees and buildings, was integral to the development of…
Tarnish is slowly engulfing one of the oldest objects in MoMA's collection, a daguerreotype from 1842.
In 1839, Hippolyte Bayard invented photography. And nobody cared.