View from the Window at Le Gras (French: Point de vue du Gras) is the oldest surviving photograph. It was created by French inventor Nicéphore Niépce between June 4 and July 18, 1827, in Saint-Loup-de-Varennes, France, and shows parts of the buildings and surrounding countryside of his estate, Le Gras, as seen from a high window. The image was created by heliography, a process which Niépce had invented around 1822, and which uses the hardening of bitumen in light to record an image after washing off the remaining unhardened material.