A rather dull, boring picture isn’t it?
Guess again. In the lower left corner you will see two small figures, one standing, one sitting. This is the first known photograph of a human being, taken by Louis Daguerre in Paris, 1838. In these earliest years of photography it took upwards of ten minutes of exposure time to set the image on the surface of the silver plate. As such, anything that was moving in this picture…the horses, pedestrians, leaves blowing down the street…simply vanished from view. Those two figures in the lower left remained still long enough to have their picture taken. Speculation is that the standing person was getting his shoes shined and thus lingered long enough to be captured in the photograph, but we will never know for sure.
I love these little unexpected glimpses into the past.