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Possibly the oldest photograph of a human being surfaces online

The street looks abandoned because the exposure time was seven minutes, making it too slow to capture most of the people and carriages moving in the street.

By Aileen Graef
"Boulevard du Temple by Daguerre" by Louis Daguerre - Scanned from The Photography Book, Phaidon Press, London, 1997/Public domain via Wikipedia
"Boulevard du Temple by Daguerre" by Louis Daguerre - Scanned from The Photography Book, Phaidon Press, London, 1997/Public domain via Wikipedia

PARIS, Nov. 7 (UPI) -- The oldest photograph to capture a human being from 1838 by Louis Daguerre has surfaced online.

The photo has been seen before but got more attention after being published on the website Mashable. The image shows a city street in Paris that appears to be empty. Appears because most of the people and carriages in the street were moving too quickly to be captured with the seven minute exposure time.

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However, in the lower left corner of the photograph, a man can be seen getting his boots shined. The two figures can be seen because they are relatively still.

The photo was of the Boulevard du Temple, known for its cafes, theaters and restaurants. It was nicknamed "Boulevard du Crime" because it is where the crime melodramas happened until Napoleon III had the streets of Paris modernized and remodeled in 1853.

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