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<\/a><\/div>\nAbove the Fault Lines:<\/p>\n
\u201cBoston from a Hot-Air Balloon\u201d and Antebellum America<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
James Wallace Black’s tattered, blurry, and faded aerial photograph of 1860s Boston is certainly a far cry from the crystal-clear satellite images found on Google Maps. Still, the content of the photo is instantly recognizable, at least to the modern eye: hundreds of tightly-packed rectangles form distinguishable city blocks, streets are shrunk to thin black lines, and bodies of water adopt the form of blank, black chunks. Yet at the time of this photograph’s creation, viewers may well have had a difficult time deciphering such an alien document. Photography was still a nascent technology in the 1860s, and aerial<\/em> photography was even younger \u2013 Black’s image, taken just two years after the invention of the hot-air balloon, is likely the oldest surviving air-born photograph.[1]<\/a> In its technical imperfections, its innovation, and its very existence, James Wallace Black’s \u201cBoston from a Hot-Air Balloon\u201d depicts not just a birds-eye view of Beantown but also a narrative of the priorities and capabilities of early American photography.<\/p>\n Apart from being one of the first aerial photographs, \u201cBoston from a Hot-Air Balloon\u201d was also among the first creations of the newly invented paper print. Unlike its predecessor, the metal-based daguerreotype, paper photographs were easily reproduced and required a far shorter exposure time.[2]<\/a> This latter feature was undoubtedly crucial for the creation of images such as these, where the subject was in constant motion, and enabled photographers in general to shoot less controlled environments and subjects, broadening their artistic capabilities. This consideration makes the technical aspect of Black’s shot all the more impressive, since he was using a new form of a new technology in an environment that no other photographer had previously experienced. It also helps to explain why the image’s clarity and detail doesn’t quite stack up with other, grounded photographs from the time: no doubt Black was as much experimenting with this in-flight set-up as he was actually aiming to make a good photograph.<\/p>\n Beyond its technical novelty, Black’s decision to shoot Boston from high above is also representative of a growing public interest in non-portrait photographs.[3]<\/a> Around this time, photographers such as Silas A. Holmes and Edward Anthony, whose respective photographs of Niagara Falls and Broadway I also selected for this assignment, were beginning to take their cameras away from the familiar environment of the upper- and middle-class American parlor and into the natural world.[4]<\/a> Though Americans had long been able to memorialize the environment through maps and paintings, photography offered a far more accurate and present depiction of reality. Similarly, while many Bostonians had likely seen maps or drawings of their city, this photograph captures their city honestly and nakedly; unlike paintings, which minimize and exaggerate features according to aesthetic and artistic preference, the eye of the camera captures all of its subject’s contours and blemishes. Whereas previous depictions of Boston might have chosen to focus on a singular landmark, building, or beauty, Black’s birds-eye cityscape depicts a sprawling metropolis whose size seems to fill the frame to its bursting point.<\/p>\n Indeed, sense of space is incredibly instrumental to the aesthetic appeal this photograph likely had at its inception, and continues to exhibit today. On one hand, the hundreds of tiny buildings and interwoven streets underscore the incredible size and density of Boston even in the nineteenth century. Yet there is also a sense of smallness<\/em> invoked by an image that reduces buildings to rectangles, and erases individual people entirely. At a time when other new technologies such as the telegraph and postal service made cross-continental, even global communication a reality, Americans were encouraged more than ever to think of themselves as part of a larger whole. As the nation moved ever closer to civil war, \u201cBoston from a Hot-Air Balloon\u201d was likely a much-needed, if imperfect reminder of American solidarity.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Works Cited<\/p>\n Black, James Wallace. Boston from a Hot-Air Balloon<\/em>. ca. 1860. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History<\/em>. Web. 23 Apr. 2015.<\/p>\n \u201cJames Wallace Black: [Boston from a Hot-Air Balloon].\u201d Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History<\/em>. Metropolitan Museum of Art, n.d. Web. 23 Apr. 2015.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Daguerrian Era and Early American Photography on Paper, 1839-1860.\u201d Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History<\/em>. Metropolitan Museum of Art, n.d. Web. 23 Apr. 2015.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n [1]<\/a> \u201cJames Wallace Black: [Boston from a Hot-Air Balloon]\u201d Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History<\/em>. Metropolitan Museum of Art, n.d. Web. 23 Apr. 2015.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n [2]<\/a> \u201cThe Daguerrian Era and Early American Photography on Paper, 1839-1860.\u201d Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History<\/em>. Metropolitan Museum of Art, n.d. Web. 23 Apr. 2015.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n [3]<\/a> \u201cThe Daguerrian Era.\u201d<\/p>\n [4]<\/a> \u201cThe Daguerrian Era.\u201d<\/p>\n By Alec \u201cBoston from a Hot-Air Balloon\u201d \u2013 James Wallace Black, ca. 1860 Above the Fault Lines: \u201cBoston from a Hot-Air Balloon\u201d and Antebellum America James Wallace Black’s tattered, blurry, and faded aerial photograph of 1860s Boston is certainly a far cry from the crystal-clear satellite images found on Google Maps. Still, the content of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-public","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his245\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his245\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his245\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his245\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his245\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his245\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1553\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his245\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his245\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his245\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![](\"http:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his245\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-rss-multi-importer\/images\/facebook.png\")
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