The first photo published in a newspaper

yubblegum•about 2 hours ago

Any French sleuths in the house that can geolocate that street? There is partial visibility of the signage for a chocolate factory. (Just curious.)

p.s. AI assisted search to the rescue: "The factory visible in the photo was located in the 11th arrondissement, near the intersection of rue Saint-Maur-Popincourt and rue du Faubourg-du-Temple."

link has pic of the same location today: https://marinaamaral.substack.com/p/the-first-photo-of-an-in...

tecleandor•about 1 hour ago

Wikipedia says [0] it's rue Saint-Maur-Popincourt, and from this article [1] it says it was taken from 92 Rue du Faubourg du Temple. Going there with Google Street Maps and rotating to look to rue Saint-Maur, seems feasible.

  0: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archivo:Barricades_rue_Saint-Maur._Avant_l%27attaque,_25_juin_1848._Apr%C3%A8s_l%E2%80%99attaque,_26_juin_1848.jpg
  1: https://www.unjourdeplusaparis.com/paris-reportage/premiere-photo-barricade-histoire

derbOac•33 minutes ago

Thanks for that link.

I've seen this photo before but never with any historical context, other than its significance as a photography milestone.

That site explains the context of it as a news photo relatively well.

projektfu•about 2 hours ago

The opening line was funny, because the Wall Street Journal famously had no photos long into the color photo era of newspapers. When did they add them? Sometime in the late 90s/2000s?

Then again, financial news doesn't really lend itself to photojournalism. A photo isn't going to make the story of a bankruptcy or merger more believable. The rest of the media would show an exasperated trader on the day of a market crash, but at the level of traders some will benefit from a bull market and others will benefit from a bear. So it's just pointless showing the photo.

I always liked the hand drawings of people referred to in the stories.

ghaff•4 minutes ago

Without researching, I would say the 2000s. They held off for a long time. As you suggest, it was a somewhat stodgy paper for ages that didn't really need photos prior to getting into more "lifestyle" and such topics later.

Worf•35 minutes ago

If we could get rid of useless stock photos, the world would be a better place. An article about headaches doesn't need a picture of someone with a headache. WE KNOW WHAT A HEADACHE IS. An article about someone arrested doesn't need a picture of a generic crime scene. An article about Facebook doesn't need a photo of a monitor at an angle showing Facebook.

But apparently it drives engagement because people can't sustain their focus on text-only media?

sudb•about 1 hour ago

Am I right in thinking that the picture provided with the blog post is the actual photo and not the inked engraving?

The first photo published in a newspaper

⚡ Community Insights

Discussion (7 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews