Artist: Hippolyte Bayard (1801 - 1887) Biography:
Employed as a civil servant, Hippolyte Bayard reportedly invented photography before Louis-Jacques Mande Dauguerre and William Henry Fox Talbot. He was supposedly convinced by one of Dauguerre’s colleagues to delay the announcement of his invention, and was therefore not credited with the accomplishment. As a protest to this, Bayard created the first political-protest photography in 1840, portrayed himself as a drowned man with an inscription declaring himself as the true inventor. Bayard continued to photograph for fifty years and was the first to be commissioned by the Commission du Monuments Historiques to document French architecture.