The Network Of Time
You could be connected to 1842 in four photos
Just one generation has passed since the creation of the camera
To illustrate how little time has passed since the advent of photography, consider how anyone appearing in a photo with Queen Elizabeth II today is only three degrees of separation away from a photo taken four years after the first known photo of people.
The Royal Collection Trust says this March 1842 portrait of Albert, Prince Consort is the first known photograph to have survived of a member of the British royal family. In 1842, 105 years will pass until the end of British direct rule in India, and 23 years will pass until slavery is abolished in the United States.
Fifty-two years later, this 1894 photo depicts the christening of Prince Edward Albert of York (later King Edward VIII). Albert, Queen Victoria and their nine children appear – including George, Duke of York (later King George V, fourth from left) and Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught and Strathearn (second from left).
Thirty-two years later, in May 1926, George V and Prince Arthur were present at another christening – that of one-month-old Princess Elizabeth of York, 27 years before her coronation as Queen Elizabeth II. Elizabeth is held here by her mother Elizabeth, Duchess of York (later Queen Elizabeth and Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother), while Arthur and George V respectively appear first and second from left in the back row.
Having celebrated her 93rd birthday in April, the Queen still makes regular public appearances where large crowds are captured along with her likeness, ensuring thousands of people every year are made three degrees away from a photo in 1842. (Here, she waves to the crowds at day one of Royal Ascot at Ascot Racecourse on June 18, 2019 in Ascot, England.)
How far back can you go?
At least one other picture from 1842 can be connected to today (Charles Darwin and his son William Erasmus, search for Charles Darwin on the front page to see). The connection with the biggest gap in time possible is that we could all be connected to the very first known photo of people – in just two degrees.
Louis Daguerre’s View of the Boulevard du Temple, taken from a window in Paris in 1838, is generally accepted to be the first photo depicting any living people. Captured using a complicated daguerreotype process lasting about seven to ten minutes, a bootblack and his ever-still customer were the only ones who stuck around long enough to appear in the final composition despite regular foot and horse traffic filling the street.
Assuming the bootblack could be a child as young as approximately 10, it is possible he lived up to about 110 and passed without his appearance in this photo being discovered.
If the mysterious bootblack had his last year in 1938, it is within the realm of possibility that his final three decades saw him photographed with people who are alive today, ages 81-111. (French census results show 21,393 centenarians in 2016.) If you were to be photographed with any of these people today, you would only be two degrees away from the first known photo of people.
Because the identities of Daguerre’s first subjects have never been discovered, we currently have no way of proving or disproving the Supercentenarian Bootblack Theory.