Daguerreotype photography The daguerreotype was the first practical method of taking a lasting image and was available to the public in 1839. The process was invented by Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, a French artist and a chemist who based it on Joseph Nicéphore Niépce’s process of heliography (sun drawing), a French inventor, who is credited as the … More Ancestor to the modern ‘Selfie’