![]() ![]() “At this signal the picture was taken, the kites were pulled down and the camera reloaded.” Syndicated in newspapers nationwide, Lawrence’s images were “at the least, a very early example of an aerial news shot - and perhaps the first,” says William L. “Exposures were made by electric current carried through the insulated core of the steel cable kiteline the moment the shutter snapped, a small parachute was released,” explained Beaumont Newhall, the Museum of Modern Art’s first photography curator, in Airborne Camera: The World from the Air and Outer Space. His most famous such photograph captured the damage caused by the devastating 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire he used 17 kites to suspend a camera 2,000 feet in the air to record the image. George Lawrence later perfected a method of taking panoramas from above by strapping large-format cameras with curved film plates to kites. James Wallace Black-Metropolitan Museum of Art James Wallace Black’s 1860 aerial photograph taken from tethered hot air balloon Queen of the Air 2,000 feet above Boston is the oldest surviving aerial photograph. Gaspar Felix Tournachon, more commonly known as “Nadar,” is credited with taking the first successful aerial photograph in 1858 from a hot air balloon tethered 262 feet over Petit-Bicêtre (now Petit-Clamart), just outside Paris his original photos have been lost. It wasn’t long after commercial photography was invented in the mid-19th century before “adventurous amateurs” launched cameras into the sky using balloons, kites and even rockets, according to Paula Amad’s 2012 overview of the history of aerial photography, published in the journal History of Photography. And in some surprising ways, the history of aerial photography dovetails with the last century of human history more broadly. For hundreds of years, airborne cameras have made awe-inspiring images of our planet, revealed the devastating scale of natural disasters, and tipped the scales in combat. ![]() But they are only the latest development in a long history of aerial photography. Drones are often celebrated for their ability to capture a new vantage point on the world, revealing the beauty of our planet from high above. ![]()
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