The Rh Negative Blog

Was he?

Cornelius’s 1839 photograph of himself. The back reads, “The first light picture ever taken”. The Cornelius portrait is the first known photographic portrait taken in America, preceded by Bayard’s in France.


Robert Cornelius was an American photographer and pioneer in the history of photography. He designed the photographic plate for the first photograph taken in the United States, an image of Central High School taken by Joseph Saxton in 1839.