Desire to Look from Above: The beginning of aerial photography

Liu, Ivy Yufei (2022) Desire to Look from Above: The beginning of aerial photography. 8th Congress of the Portuguese Anthropological Association, University of Évora, Évora, Portugal. 06 - 09 Sep 2022.

Record type: Conference or Workshop Item (Other)

Abstract

In 1858, the photographer Gaspard-Félix Tournachon, best known as Nadar, lifted with his camera in a human-carrying balloon to the sky. Several people had similar ideas at that time, today recognized as the beginning of aerial photography. My paper draws on the early days of aerial photography to interrogate the dialectical relationship between flying media (optic instruments mounted on flying platfor-ms) and images. By looking into this period, I want to figure out how did aerial images shape modern recognition (and understanding) of the relationship between the Earth and our-selves. I will take on this fundamental question through a historical juncture. Considering that the photography process was largely recognized through Daguerre inventions in 1839, that the first human-carrying balloon was operative already in 1783, and the first camera in the 1820s (Nicéphore Niépce), all the technological elements to support an aerial photograph had already been there ready to use. Why is there still a more than twenty-year gap between the mature technological elements and the birth of aerial photography? How was the desire to look f rom above brought to life? How was the human desire to photograph real ground conditions inspired by the sky? What is more important here: do these images write their own history of the Earth?

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