Travelling back from our holiday a few days ago, I amused myself by looking out of the window of the plane and watching Spain glide by below me. We all now take for granted the ability to look down on the earth from above, but imagine what a novelty it must have been 100 years ago. Whilst a still photograph mimicked little more than a blink of an eye and a moving picture was what we were used to seeing, before flight nobody had seen the world from above.
This is an early aerial photograph of Trafalgar Square in London. It has always inhabited the fringes of my collection : it is not a particularly rare photograph and there are no fascinating messages on the reverse. But imagine the thrill of those who received such a photograph just 100 years ago and knew, at last, what was meant by a birds' eye view.
The early aerial views I wonder how they were accomplished..I think they are awesome..and people must have been amazed:)
ReplyDeleteIt must have been quite something to receive a postcard of this kind.
ReplyDeleteThis is a wonderful postcard. Your musing perspective caught me back into time. Thank you!
ReplyDeleteI guess, before this, we could only accept the word of a pigeon?
ReplyDeleteIn those earlier times, this would be a flight of fancy. If many people would be inspired to take to the air then, where can we take our imagination today?
ReplyDeleteHaving inherited a collection of early 1900s postcards I'm getting fascinated myself lately with the spirit of that era. I keep coming across cards that at first sight I at first often dismiss as a rather dull picture of an old building, monument, whatever ... But when I look it up, it dawns on me that when that card was sent it wasn't a picture of an OLD something at all - it was news. Postcards back then were the emails and MMS of today.
ReplyDelete