The first-ever photograph is returning home to France for first time in 200 years

The first-ever photograph is returning back to where it was taken in France for the first time in 200 years. Shot by Nicéphore Niépce in either 2026 or 2027 – no one knows the precise date - the image entitled View from the Window at Le Gras will go on show in Chalon-sur-Saône, in the Burgundy region, as part of France's 200th anniversary of photography celebrations.

The image of a courtyard was shot from a room in Niépce's home in the village Saint-Loup-de-Varennes, just outside Chalon-sur-Saône. It was recorded onto a sheet of pewter plate, which was coated with bitumen of Judea – a naturally occurring light-sensitive resin. He used a camera obscura to create the 8-hour exposure.

Niépce travelled to the UK shortly after the image was taken, to look his older brother in Kew – and to promote his photographic process, which he called heliography (the Greek for sun drawing). He had hoped to demonstrate his image-making process to the Royal Society and King George IV. But the presentation to the Royal Society never happened as Niépce refused to disclose the exact technical details of his chemical process, which went against the society's rules for investigating new discoveries. He returned to France later that year, leaving some of his plates with a botanical illustrator and friend Francis Bauer.

His first-ever image is now part of the Gernsheim Collection, which was purchased by the Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin in 1963. "The Gernsheim collection is one of the seminal collections in the United States of the history of photography and contains an unparalleled range of more than 35,000 images," explains Michael Pritchard.

The Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas and the Musée Nicéphore Niépce have jointly announced thatView from the Window at Le Gras will be shown in both museums in 2027.

The heliograph will be included in an exhibition Radical Forms: Photographic Experimentation from the Harry Ransom Center's Collections which opens on February 27 2027. It will then head to France to be displayed in the exhibition Helios 1826-1827 at the Niépce Museum in Chalon-sur-Saône, close to Niépce's home and where the plate was made, from April 26 to June 20 2027.