Interesting history.

The credit for photographing a human for the first time is generally given to Louis Daguerre, the inventor of the daguerreotype process. In an 1838 photo he took in Paris, Daguerre caught an image of a man who appears to be getting his shoes or boots shined at a street corner. You can see the figure, together with that of the shoeshiner, in the bottom left of the image above.

Daguerre's process involved exposing a chemically treated metal plate for several minutes. If someone or something was moving within the frame, it wouldn't show up in a daguerreotype photo. But since this person remained relatively stationary as the image was captured, he showed up in the picture. The anonymous Parisian thus gets credit for being the first person ever to have his picture taken. Which begs the question, "I wonder what Louis Daguerre would think of facebook?"