Paris: 1889.
Price: $8,000.00
Unbound. Six gelatin silver photographs taken with a No. 1 Kodak camera. Each image is 2.5" in diameter and is mounted on a 3.5" x 4.5" card with a printed Kodak back and bears an ink caption in English below the image, indicating that they were all taken from the Paris Balloon on September 10th, 1889. Two of the images are taken looking straight down from the balloon, two are of the newly opened Eiffel Tower and the surrounding buildings of the 1889 Paris Exposition Universelle, and two are of Paris in the distance, one of which is focused on the River Seine. The images are slightly unfocused, presumably from atmospheric haze, slight soiling on the mount but crisp and clean images. The Exposition Universelle was organized in Paris in 1889, from 15th May to the 6th November, and it was for this event that the Eiffel Tower was built. Also in 1889 Eastman introduced the No. 1 Kodak Camera, which was essentially the first broadly distributed camera intended for amateur use. Obviously an intrepid amateur, almost certainly an American, took the opportunity to utilize their new No. 1 Kodak to document the opening of the Eiffel Tower, in what must certainly be among the earliest examples of amateur aerial photography.
Item #416302
