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The Texas Department of Public Safety helicopter took off from the Alpine airport with four of us on board. It was several weeks after the devastating Rock House Fire in April 2011. The pilot and copilot were DPS officers and I was a passenger with Brian Powell, who managed the area office for state representative Pete Gallego. Representative Gallego was in Austin and had Brian survey the fire damage. In my capacity as commissioner for Jeff Davis County, I was asked along. I had never flown over our country at low altitude and was excited to finally have the opportunity. At first the experience was disconcerting. As a historian and map collector, I am used to knowing where I am in reference to the land, but from the air I quickly lost all orientation. Without the compass and GPS in the control panel, I was lost. And then it did not matter anymore . Even with the land black from the fire, the view was magnificent, and north, south, east, or west was no longer of concern . The beauty of the landforms, mountains , rock palisades, dry river courses, and an occasional green oasis where springs leaked from the bluffs leaves one with a sense of awe. This is the same feeling one has when looking at the photographs of Paul Chaplo. On the ground in the Big Bend country everything seems to either stab, stick, sting, or bite, but from the air the vegetation merges into the rocks and the rocks into landforms to create a seamless beauty, providing images of artistic as well as documentary interest. The viewer is swept up into a way of looking at the land that is unique and where place is less important than form. To see the environment from above has long intrigued mankind. One of the most successful art forms of the nineteenth century was the Bird’s Eye View lithographic print of one’s community. No self-respecting town would pass on the opportunity to commission and promote such an image. A number of artists and print companies of the day became both successful and famous for their work. The development of inexpensive lithographic printing methods that could successfully reproduce multiples of an exact image flourished in this period, becoming what Peter Marzio called the “democratic art.” Artists fanned out over the countryside to produce these town and city views for commercial sale at reasonable prices that any self-respecting citizen could afford. According to Dr. Ron Tyler, retired director of the Amon Carter Museum, there are over seventy of these views of Texas Introduction Lawrence John Francell 2 : INTRODUCTION towns. Over 2,400 towns and cities in America are documented in this way. The problem with the bird’s-eye view is that each artist had a different style and, as a commercial product, each image has to show the community in the best light. The sun is always shining, industry and railroads yards are clean, and the grass and trees are green. As Gerald Danzer, an expert in this field, has written, “It might be best therefore, to think of these views as flattering urban portraits that follow certain rules of perspective, setting and mood, and overall style. Because they were sold as commercial ventures to the townspeople, they had to look accurate to be convincing, but not so honest as to reveal the problems and imperfections of their subjects.” Thus the bird’s-eye view is interesting as art or illustration, but ultimately unsatisfying as an accurate historic document establishing an aerial perspective. With the development of photography, the world of art and the ability to document what was perceived as reality would change. In 1839 the Frenchman Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre announced his photographic process to the world. Beginning with the Daguerreotype, new and improved processes were developed so that by mid-century photography was a common medium. In 1858 another Frenchman , who called himself Nadar, took to the air in a balloon and created the first aerial photograph. It was in Boston in 1860 that James Wallace Black made the first aerial image in this country. His photograph of downtown Boston, made at a height of 1,200 feet, was described by another local photographer, Oliver Wendell Holmes: “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.” The need to reach for the sky in order to...

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