In Camera Aloft: Edward Steichen in the Great War, Von Hardesty explains how Steichen, one of the 20th century’s most influential photographers, also had an outsized impact on the art of aerial photography. Although in his mid-thirties when World War I broke out, Steichen volutnteered with the U.S. expeditionary force and forged a photographic unit that set the standard for decades. Along with telling this heretofore overlooked story in Steichen’s life, Camera Aloft also presents a striking collection of little known images that have lost none of their innovative power in the course of a century.
Camera Aloft is published April 30 by Cambridge University Press. The images here are reprinted with the permission of the author and the publisher.
USASC via Cambridge University Press
German Rumpler Taube airplane in flight
USASC via Cambridge University Press
Air Observer Balloon Corps
Germans prepare for observation fllight
USASC via Cambridge University Press
Stockpile of cameras for front
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Nieuport in Flight
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Motorcycle couriers
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Fred Place and camera
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Souilly airfield
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Laboratory of the 5th Photo Section
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Phony artillery positon of enemy
USASC via Cambridge University Press
Air observer with handheld camera
USASC via Cambridge University Press
