behind amateur lenses

The first attempt to reproduce the First Photograph was conducted at Helmut Gernsheim's request by the Research Laboratory of the Eastman Kodak Company in Harrow, England, in March of 1952. After three weeks of work utilizing strong side lighting, high contrast film and the identical angular displacement of the camera and enlarger lenses, the lab produced this copyprint. However, because of the sharpness of the lens and the camera's objective nature of precisely copying the texture and unevenness of the plate itself, Gernsheim declared this negative-like version to be a "gross distortion of the original" and forbade its reproduction until 1977

.Kodak Research Laboratory, Harrow, England.
Gelatin silver print reproduction of Joseph Nicéphore Niépce's
View from the Window at Le Gras.
March 1952.
Gelatin silver print.
20.3 x 25.4 cm.