15
Wise (1895), the American William A. Eddy (1895),
and Lord Baden-Powell (England, pre-1900). Early
camera-carrying rockets include an 1888 model invented
by Amedee Denisse (France) and another in 1897 by
Alfred Nobel (Sweden). One of the fi rst successful
rocket cameras was patented in 1903 by Germany’s
Alfred Maul.
Despite the considerable and often dangerous bal-
looning activities experienced by photographers, high-
altitude aerial photography from unpowered fl ying
machines proved to be mainly a form of experimental
photography and impractical until the advent of more
stable aerial platforms (rigid airships or dirigibles, and
airplanes) and more advanced photographic technology.
The French engineer Henri Giffard fl ew the fi rst self-
propelled dirigible on 24 September 1852. Led by the
English émigré Frederick Marriott (1805–1884), the
fi rst successful American experiment of a self-powered,
rigid airship, the Avitor ̧ occurred in California in 1869.
Captain Charles Renard and Captain Arthur Krebs,’ air-
ship, La France, fl ew several times near Paris in August
- Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin’s self-powered,
rigid airship, made its fi rst successful fl ight at Lake
Constance, Switzerland, in July 1900. None of these
early dirigible experiments, however, appear to have
involved aerial photography.
Aerial photography did not emerge as a separate,
highly specialized branch of photography until it had
fully proved its worth during World War One (1914–
1918). In North America, Canada is regarded as a leader
in the peaceful application of aerial photography in the
fi rst two years after the war. Many of the men who fl ew
the aircraft and staffed the special cameras in freezing
conditions were war veterans.
David Mattison
See also: Daguerre, Louis-Jacques-Mandé;
Daguerreotype; Nadar (Gaspard-Félix Tournachon);
Black, James Wallace; Glaisher, James; Negretti
and Zambra; Woodbury, Walter Bentley; Dry Plate
Negatives: Non-Gelatine, Including Dry Collodion;
Dry Plate Negatives: Gelatine; Tissandier, Gaston;
Expositions Universelle, Paris (1854, 1855, 1867
etc.); Eastman, George; and Kodak.
Further Reading
Bacon, J.M., The Dominion of the Air: The Story of Aerial
Navigation. London, Cassell & Co.: 1902; electronic reprint,
http://www.bookrags.com, accessed 10 March 2002.
Burtch, Robert, “A Short History of Photogrammetry,” Institute
For Digital Mapping, Ferris State University, last updated 6
March 1997, http://users.netonecom.net/~rburtch/sure340/his-
tory.html, accessed 19 March 2002.
Crouch, Tom D., The Eagle Aloft: Two Centuries of the Bal-
loon in America. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution
Press, 1983.
Haydon, Frederick Stansbury, Aeronautics in the Union and
Confederate Armies, With a Survey of Military Aeronautics
Prior to 1861, vol. 1. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press,; reprint, Military Ballooning During the Early Civil
Wa r. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000.
Heiman, Grover, Aerial Photography: The Story of Aerial Map-
ping and Reconnaissance. New York: Macmillan, 1972.
Jackson, Donald Dale, The Aeronauts. Alexandria: Time-Life
Books, 1980.
Martin, Rupert, ed., The View from Above: 125 Years of Aerial
Photography. London: The Photographers’ Gallery, 1983.
Mead, Peter, The Eye in the Air: History of Air Observation
and Reconnaissance for the Army, 1785–1945. London: Her
Majesty’s Stationery Offi ce, 1983.
Newhall, Beaumont, Airborne Camera: The World from the Air
and Outer Space. New York: Hastings House, 1969.
Shaw, S. Bernard, Photographing Canada from Flying Canoes.
Burnstown: General Store Publishing House, 2001.
Thomson, Don W., Skyview Canada: A Story of Aerial Photogra-
phy in Canada. Ottawa: Information Canada, 1975.AFONG, LAI; See LAI AFONGAFRICA (SUB-SAHARAN)
Sub-Saharan Africa is a nineteenth-century term used
to describe those countries of the African continent
that were not considered part of North Africa, but syn-
onymous with “the Dark Continent” for Europeans. In
today’s post-colonial world, it is a troubled and some-
what artifi cial term which, in the case of the history
of photography on the continent, could perpetuate a
fragmented and distorted view. Equally problematic is
a unifi ed history that, in the aim for comprehensiveness,
risks concealing the diversity of national and regional
expressions behind a mask of homogeny. For a fuller
picture of the developments of photography in Africa
as a whole, please also refer to the entries for Africa,
North and Egypt.
Photography was introduced to Africa by Euro-
pean travellers as early as October–November of 1839.
Frenchman Frédéric Goupil-Fesquet accompanying
his uncle, the painter Horace Vernet and Swiss Pierre
Joly de Lotbinière made daguerreotypes of ancient
monuments in Egypt. Their photographs were photo-
mechanically reproduced for Noël-Paymal Lerebours’
Excursions Daguerrians (Paris, 1840–44) and Hector
Horeau’s Panorama d’Egypte et de Nubie (1841). Both
publications catered for a well-established European
market for Orientalist art that had developed since the
late eighteenth century.
Steamships fi rst brought photography to coastal cit-
ies and towns of sub-Saharan Africa. Advertisements in
newspapers from the 1840s testify to daguerreotypists at
work in major African ports of call on the maritime trade
routes between Europe and Australasia. They appeared
in the West African city of Freetown in Sierra Leone