View From the Laboratory

View from the Laboratory pays tribute to the inventor of photography Nicéphore Niépce. Taken in July 2008, the images capture Moriyama’s visit to the Burgundy town of Chalon-sur-Saône, photographing the town where Niépce was born, Moriyama also photographed the inventor’s studio and workshop in Saint-loup-de-Vaurennes. Moriyama’s photographic pilgrimage comes 186 years after the creation of his first image, “Vue de la fenêtre au Gras”. Through the journey, what unravels is a narrative that tells of the transformative nature of photography, reminding both photographer and viewer anew of the very origins of art, and the fragility of the medium itself. Now almost completely erased by the passage of time, Nicéphore Niépce’s “Vue de la fenêtre au Gras” embodies the very aura of photography itself, not inconvenienced by the mechanical acts of reproduction, but even more pronounced by the very acts of human veneration and homage by works such as Moriyama’s View from the Laboratory.