Oldest Aerial Photograph
*This is actually not the first aerial photograph. Photographer Nadar shot the first aerial photo, but it was lost. Therefore, this photo by James Wallace Black is considered to be the first aerial photograph. The photograph was taken over the iconic American city of Boston, Massachusetts. Many historic things happened in the hallowed city of Boston, and it landed another by taking its history to the sky.
Once again, the Metropolitan Museum of Art describes it best: “Best known for his photographs of Boston after the devasting fire of 1872, Black launched his solo career in 1860 with the production of a series of aerial photographs taken from Samuel King’s hot-air balloon the “Queen of the Air.” Black’s photographs caught the attention of Oliver Wendell Holmes, a poet and professor of medicine at Harvard, who gave this photograph its title. In July 1863, Holmes wrote in the “Atlantic Monthly”: “Boston, as the eagle and wild goose see it, is a very different object from the same place as the solid citizen looks up at its eaves and chimneys.”
