In Switzerland, a noteworthy exhibition took place in Bern at the Swiss National Library from February 28 to June 28, 2019. Despite its small size, the Bernese exhibition was curious and full of insights, delving particularly into the semi-romantic figure of Eduard Spelterini, a multilingual adventurer with a somewhat mysterious and swashbuckling past, but an immensely talented photographer.
His real name was Eduard Schweizer, and Spelterini was merely his stage name. He was born in Toggenburg in 1832. At 18, he moved to Milan and then to Paris, first to study music and then, abandoning his musical studies, to dedicate himself to ballooning. It seems that it was during this period that he began using his new surname. In 1877, he obtained a license as a balloon pilot from the Académie d’Aérostation Météorologique de France in Paris. A few years later, he began transporting passengers, and in 1887 he acquired his own balloon, the Urania. Between 1870 and 1926, he made about 570 balloon flights in Europe, Egypt, and South Africa.
He was the first pilot to fly over the Alps (1898), a feat he repeated ten times between 1898 and 1913. As a photographer, he developed a revolutionary technique that allowed him to produce aerial photographs with absolute clarity, unique in the world at that time, making him rich and famous, and always in demand for lectures and balloon shows. The outbreak of the war and the advent of airplanes ended his career. He died in 1931, poor and forgotten by everyone, in a remote Austrian village.
The exhibition is also a valuable journey through the history of geography and more specifically through the trajectory of the ancient dream of observing the territory from above, as indicated by the exhibition’s title: “Dall’alto, il Pallone di Spelterini e il Drone”. Thus, from the legendary and pioneering figure of the Swiss Eduard Spelterini with his balloons (through Spelterini’s photos from the Swiss National Library’s Cabinet), moving on to photographs taken from planes and satellites, up to the domestic use of drones, to trace the entire evolution of aerial photography in Switzerland. Aerial photographs, now accessible to many with drones, were once the exclusive domain of pioneers and later reconnaissance aircraft. But the exhibition also highlights the ongoing discussions about the use of drones, as the view from above has always been a symbol of knowledge and therefore power.
(Excerpt from Corriere del Ticino, March 21, 2019).
Spelterini was the first to see and photograph the Alps from above.
This is a photo of the “Matterhorn” taken from the balloon in 1910.