France is preparing the most ambitious celebration of photography ever staged, with a year-long bicentenary programme running from September 2026 to September 2027 to mark two centuries since the medium's invention.
The French Ministry of Culture has unveiled plans to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the first permanent photo, taken by Nicéphore Niépce in 1826-1827 at his estate in Saint-Loup-de-Varennes, Burgundy. That pioneering image used a bitumen-coated pewter plate and required an eight-hour exposure in bright sunshine to capture a simple courtyard scene. (Read more about it in our article, When was photography invented?).
