[Heron Pond, Zoological Gardens, Brussels] 1854 - 1856

This photograph, Heron Pond, Zoological Gardens, Brussels, was made by Louis-Pierre-Théophile Dubois de Nehaut. We don’t know exactly when, but it would have been among the earliest photographs ever made. The materiality here is key. Before photography, images took a lot of work. Think of painting, or engraving, or even weaving a tapestry. But here, the artist has harnessed a new kind of labor. This picture is a record of a specific time and place, made through a chemical process. This photograph, with its soft sepia tones, captures a scene with remarkable detail. You can see the individual blades of grass and the delicate feathers of the herons. Look closer, and you notice the time involved in setting up a photograph like this. The exposure time would have been long, so everything had to be perfectly still. The photograph isn’t just a record of the pond, but also of the technological moment, and a shift in our perception of time and labor. It's a moment where art begins to move away from the slow, deliberate process of handcraft, and towards the instantaneous capture of the world around us.