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old photographs

31st of January, 2026

the two oldest photographs that we have are that of windows:

View from the Window at Le Gras (1826, Nicéphore Niépce)

Windows From Inside South Gallery (August, 1835, William Henry Fox Talbot)

i think there's something poetic about the two oldest photographs being of windows. photographs are little snapshots of a world gone-by. a moment of reality captured and trapped in a film or on paper. the murky look of the photographs, faded and fogged up from time and the early equipment used to take them. the past being a window, clear and see-through but the paper is yellow in the corners and the image is hazed up. a whole world captured on a piece of paper but only a tiny part of it is seen.

and windows are two-way. what looks out is also looked upon. this unmoving photograph looks back at us, travelled to us from back in time to show us its time, now observing the observers, it is weird looking at our own world back. a mirror in a photograph of a window. a window in a mirrored reality of us. there's something poetic about it.

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