Paris marks the precise spot where the first humans were photographed, and it’s not where you might think

The famous image above may be something you’ve seen before. Louis Daguerre’s 1838 photograph of the Boulevard du Temple in Paris shows a broad, tree-lined street. It seems totally empty.

But look closely at the bottom left of the picture and you’ll see two figures: a man having his shoes shined by a boy.

This duo are thought to be the first people ever to be photographed. Recently, after two years of detective work, a team worked out exactly where they were standing. And a bronze plaque marking the spot has now been unveiled in that very spot.

The project, titled An Unexpected Detail, was led by filmmaker and producer Maximilien Van Aertryck and his Swedish colleagues Axel Danielson and Kalle Boman, in collaboration with the City of Paris. And it ties in nicely with France’s current celebrations of 200 years of photography.

It turns out that Daguerre’s studio and his theater, the Diorama, overlooked the boulevard in question. Back then, exposures took between five and 10 minutes, so the carts and crowds on the busy boulevard didn’t register on the plate… other than these two people.

Where and when?

According to Van Aertryck, the picture was taken at 8am, and Daguerre photographed the same view at noon and in the evening. Van Aertryck told Radio France he believes the shoeshine boy to be a child of between 12 and 15.

So where was it taken? The answer surprised even the experts. Previous estimates had placed the photo near the Filles du Calvaire Métro station. But it’s actually in today’s Place de la République – a square in Paris on the border between the 3rd, 10th and 11th arrondissements – which didn’t yet exist in 1838. Georges-Eugène Haussmann (1809–1891), the official who rebuilt much of Paris in the mid-19th century, later demolished much of the area to create the square.

The story has another twist. The original daguerreotype survives, but its image is almost entirely gone. Daguerre sent it to the King of Bavaria in 1839, and it ended up in the Bavarian National Museum in Munich. Unfortunately it was badly damaged during the Second World War, and a restoration attempt in 1970 was a failure.

The version of the image shown above comes from a photograph of the plate commissioned in 1937 by Beaumont Newhall, the photography historian at MoMA in New York. And that’s not all. The image has actually been flipped: in the original daguerreotype, the two men were on the bottom right.

The new plaque is set into the sidewalk in place of two concrete slabs. One half tells the story of the image, and the other shows a detail of the shoeshine boy and his customer. Van Aertryck hopes visitors will make it their own. So if you’re ever in the Place de la République, be sure look down, and know that you’re in a place where two people made history – even if they didn’t realise it at the time.