Image: Galerie Fotohof, Salzburg
FOTOHOF will open ‘Salon of Photography’ at 7 p.m. on 1 October 2026.
For the project, participating artists were invited to identify the earliest work in their own oeuvre and present it as either a vintage print or a reconstruction.
The oldest surviving photograph was made by Nicéphore Niépce (1765–1833), an event described as marking the beginning of an epochal media invention that originated with photography, expanded into the broad field of ‘lens-based media,’ and continues to shape the perception of the world. Niépce’s ‘View from the Window at Le Gras’ (1826) is presented as an iconic metaphor for a function inherent to the new medium: visually fixing the outside world through an apparently objective apparatus and thereby making it comprehensible in a new way.
FOTOHOF’s reference to that image is listed under the German title ‘Blick aus dem Arbeitszimmer von Le Gras’ and dated 1826. The project also coincides with FOTOHOF’s 45th anniversary, which in 2026 marks almost a quarter of the period since the invention of the medium. The institution describes the anniversary project as a community project bringing together Salzburg’s photographic artists.
