12 Facts About Hippolyte Bayard

Hippolyte Bayard invented his own process that produced direct positive paper prints in the camera and presented the world's first public exhibition of photographs on 24 June 1839.

Hippolyte Bayard claimed to have invented photography earlier than Louis-Jacques Mande Daguerre in France and William Henry Fox Talbot in England, the men traditionally credited with its invention.

Hippolyte Bayard advocated combination printing and was one of the founders of a photo society.

Hippolyte Bayard developed his own method of producing photos called the direct positive process.

Hippolyte Bayard was persuaded to postpone announcing his process to the French Academy of Sciences by Francois Arago, a friend of Louis Daguerre, who invented the rival daguerreotype process.

Hippolyte Bayard eventually gave details of the process to the French Academy of Sciences on 24 February 1840, in return for money to buy better equipment.

In reaction to the injustice that he felt he had been subjected to, Hippolyte Bayard made, possibly in October 1840, the first staged photograph, Self Portrait as a Drowned Man, in which he pretends to have committed suicide, sitting and leaning to the right.

Hippolyte Bayard wrote on the back of his most notable photograph:.

Hippolyte Bayard has been at the morgue for several days, and no-one has recognized or claimed him.

Hippolyte Bayard was a founding member of the French Society of Photography.

Hippolyte Bayard was one of the first photographers to be commissioned to document and preserve architecture and historical sites in France for the Missions Heliographiques in 1851 by the Historic Monument Commission.

Hippolyte Bayard used a paper photographic process similar to the one he developed to take pictures for the Commission.