12
Further Reading
Craig, Robert L. “Fact, Public Opinion, and Persuasion: The Rise
of the Visual in Journalism and Advertising,” in Picturing the
Past: Media, History, and Photography, edited by Bonnie
Brennen and Hanno Hardt. Urbana and Chicago: University
of Illinois Press, 1999.
Panzer, Mary, “Merchant Capital: Advertising Photography in
Philadelphia before the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,”
in Ideas about Images: Essays on Film and Photography,
Rochester. New York: University Educational Services:
International Museum of Photography at George Eastman
House, 1990.
Phillips, David Clayton, Art for Industry’s Sake: Halftone Tech-
nology, Mass Photography and the Social Transformation
of American Print Culture, 1880–1920, dissertation, Yale
University, May 1996.
Sobieszek, Robert A., The art of persuasion: a history of advertis-
ing photography. New York: Abrams, 1988.
Profi table Advertising, 1891–1925.
Printer’s Ink, 1891–1915.
AERIAL PHOTOGRAPHY
Prior to the advent of airplane fl ight early in the 20th
century, the only means of obtaining aerial photographs
was via birds (mainly carrier pigeons), fl ying devices
(balloons, dirigibles kites, gliders, or rockets), or by
elevating the camera itself through various means such
as artifi cial structures—ladders, cranes and buildings—,
or geographic features such as hills and mountains.
Aerial photography today is most often associated with
powered aircraft fl ying at altitudes usually starting at
1,000 feet. Air photography today incorporates two
types of orientation to the ground: vertical and oblique.
Rupert Martin and other photo historians argue that the
vertical aerial photograph and an appreciation of it as an
aesthetic art form is a modernist viewpoint refl ected in
society’s consciousness of powered fl ight. The oblique
aerial photograph as an aesthetic convention extends
back to the very fi rst photographs taken by Daguerre in
- His daguerreotype, “Boulevard du Temple, Paris,”
looking down at the street from within or on top of a
building is also heralded as the fi rst to capture a human
fi gure. Another version of the daguerreotype exists in
which the man is not visible and a wagon or cart appears
parked opposite the shoeshine stand. Daguerre also took
several other daguerreotypes of Paris from an aerial per-
spective. Some photographers even experimented with
a vertical perspective when appropriate such as views
down geyser holes or mineshafts, and early pioneers in
balloon photography and aerial photogrammetry such
as France’s Nadar (Gaspard-Félix Tournachon) worked
on the problem of stabilizing the camera in a vertical
position. He patented a device in 1858 to maintain the
camera in a vertical orientation.
While innovative photographers such as Nadar and
the Boston photographer James Wallace Black took
great personal risks in balloon photography, historians
acknowledge that aerial photography in the 19th century
from anything other than artifi cial, fi xed structures or
geographic features was more of a novelty than a reality.
Nadar took the fi rst aerial photographs from balloons in
1858 at heights ranging from 262 feet (his fi rst show-
ing the village of Petit Bicêtre) to 1,600 feet (the one
most often published showing Paris). He was honoured
for this achievement by his cartoonist friend Honoré
Daumier (1808–1879) who produced a satirical illustra-
tion titled in English “Nadar Raising Photography to the
Height of Art.” Nadar, in addition to devoting consider-
able energy towards solving some of the problems of
aerial photography by manned balloon, also promoted
aerial travel. He founded the Société d’encouragement
pour la navigation aérienne and published his own maga-
zine L’Aéronaute. His famous and short-lived passenger
balloon Le Géant (The Giant), which made only two
ascents from Paris in October 1863, included a two-
story passenger compartment along with a photographic
darkroom. On 31 July 1868 the French magazine Le Petit
Figaro published a reproduction based on an aerial pho-
tograph Nadar took which showed the Arc de Triomphe.
Nadar was not the only photographer conducting
experiments with cameras and balloons, both unmanned
and controlled remotely from the ground. James Wallace
Black took the fi rst photograph from a balloon in the
U.S. of Boston on 13 October 1860 at a height of 1,200
feet. One early book on the history of ballooning credits
the British scientist aeronaut James Glaisher (1809-
1903), accompanied by balloonist Henry Coxwell, with
the fi rst unsuccessful attempt on 5 September 1862 to
photograph a cloudscape from above the clouds. This
was on the historic ascent on which they reached the
highest yet elevation in a balloon and nearly perished
from oxygen deprivation: around 37,000 feet (7 miles).
Photographer Henry Negretti (Negretti & Zambra)
chartered Henry Coxwell’s balloon Mammoth in 1863
for a fl ight near London. Due to the gondola’s rotation,
none of the wet-plates were successful. English inventor
Walter Bentley Woodbury patented a camera in 1877
which could be controlled from the ground through an
electric cable. Inventors in other countries such as the
Russian Viacheslav Sreznevskii also designed aerial
photography cameras; whether this was in 19th century
is not clear. The introduction of dry-plate technology
and better camera equipment meant photographers could
concentrate on image taking rather than the preparation
time for taking a photograph. The French photographer
Jean Nicolas Truchelut is credited with taking the fi rst
photographs using a dry-plate camera on a balloon fl ight
over Paris in 1879; his name is sometimes misspelled
as Triboulet. Other early French successes in aerial
photography with dry plate technology are credited to
photographer Paul Desmarets in 1880 over Rouen and
the work of writer and photographer Gaston Tissandier