Constructing the image of flight: The Wright Brothers, photography and their visual heritage

Where the photograph is concerned, historic events are not simply ‘captured’ on the negative. Over time, the photographic imprints may remake these events. History becomes photography, and photography becomes history. An example of this phenomenon comes from the beginning of the aviation age, when, on 17 December 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright (figure 1), two brothers from Dayton, Ohio, made the first controlled flight in a craft that was powered and heavier-than-air. A photograph of that first flight (figure 2) shapes our understanding of the momentous occasion. It depicts a rudimentary aeroplane barely lifted into the air. Orville Wright lies prone, face forward at the controls, while his older brother Wilbur runs alongside the machine. The image also records the physical facts associated with the flight: the rail and dolly from which the craft took off, sand impressed by footprints, a wooden bench and a cluster of tools. 1 This photograph is remembered — and repeatedly reproduced — because it shows the first plane in flight under its own power. Everything else about the photograph (how and why it was made, how the Wright brothers used it, and the broader informational and aesthetic value of the image) is generally ignored. © 2004 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.