The Earliest Existing Photographic Portrait of a Woman

The earliest photograph still in existence was taken in 1826 or 1827 by Joseph Niépce in France. Although an astonishing breakthrough, the technique was complicated and not all that useful. Things changed when Niépce's associate Louis Daguerre developed the daguerreotype process, introduced in 1839. After that, the race was on to take pictures of anything and everything. However, the subjects, circumstances, and dates of many of those early photographs are not documented as well as we'd like 184 years later. That's why there is so much ambiguity in identifying the earliest-born person ever photographed.

The earliest existing portrait ever taken is usually attributed to Robert Cornelius, who managed a selfie in 1839 thanks to the long exposure time required. But that title might come down to how you define "portrait." Another contender is Dorothy Catherine Draper, who sat for a portrait taken by her brother in 1839 or 1840. The picture above is lauded as the earliest portrait, the earliest photograph of a woman, or the earliest portrait of a woman. The word "existing" should be appended to those titles, because the photographer, John William Draper, took test pictures of his assistant the day before, but neither her name nor image was preserved. We know about Dorothy Draper, though, and you can read her story and what she went through to get this portrait made at Vintage Everyday.  -via Nag on the Lake