PARIS - The world‘s first photograph emerged after some 50 years in a private home to fetch 450,000 euros ($398,000) at an auction in Paris last Thursday — and force experts to rewrite photographic history. A Parisian bookseller and his wife unearthed Joseph Nicephore Niepce‘s photograph of a faded pen and ink drawing of a boy and a horse along with a set of letters to his son, detailing the techniques the pioneering photographer had used. Unbeknown to experts, they kept the print, which dates from 1825, for years in their Paris home before putting it up for auction with other landmark photographs at Sotheby‘s glitzy headquarters in the French capital. Experts already knew Niepce had invented photography, but had thought images dating from 1826-7 were the world‘s first. „This image and its accompanying correspondence oblige us to re-write those crucial first stages of the history of photography,“ the French arm of Sotheby‘s said in a statement.

Andre Jammes, in his 70s, runs an antique bookshop on Paris‘s arty Left Bank, and has been collecting old photographs in his spare time since the 1950s. He shot to fame in the art world after selling the first batch of his collection in 1999 in London for a total of $10.6 million. The second half went on sale this week in Paris in two parts. The first charts the development of photography in France from Niepce‘s work via an 1889 picture of the Eiffel Tower and a 1935 photo of two nude women dancing. The rest of the collection, sold on Friday, focuses on Charles Negre, one of France‘s best early photographers, whose work includes a famed snap of a top-hatted man leaning against a gargoyle fixed to the spires of Notre Dame cathedral. It was the first photograph auction since the French government abolished ancient auction laws and opened up the market to international houses like Sotheby‘s and its arch rival Christie‘s.

The historic Niepce print was snapped up by the French National Library after the government ruled it must stay in France, a Sotheby‘s spokeswoman said. The letters sold with the print explain how Niepce used chemicals that react with light to make the first permanent image — a reproduction of a 17th-century Dutch drawing. An 1855 Edouard Baldus photograph of the facade of a Parisian building fetched 300,000 euros, while an album of 67 photographs by Charles Marville of old Paris before a 19th-century revamp was expected to go for up to 525,000 euros. Reuters