Whales of the Sky

Saturday, November 5th, 2005 | random thoughts

One of my earliest memories of industrial photography is of a zeppelin. My father, who for years has been very fond of stereoscopy, used to have a set of antique 3d photographs of the LZ 127 “Graf Zeppelin”, an airship from 1929, at the heyday of dirigibles. The pictures – double photographs mounted on a antique apparatus to display the stereoscopies – showed various views from the LZ 127 during its construction. And as the pictures were in 3D, you had the sense of actually being in the hanger yourself, instead of just looking at a picture of it.

The immensity of the airship, the depth of its hollow shell, its intricate yet imposing skelettal structure have stayed with me for many years and have strongly influenced my photographic style and sense of aesthetics. That’s why I was so happy when I found out that my dad still had the pictures; at least a decent set of copies, printed as a small edition on photo paper, which were produced by one of his stereoscopic buddies.

After about 20 years I was able to look at these pictures again, some of which I’m showing you here.

I find it sad that the day of dirigibles is over: They were such beautiful whales of the sky. What I find even more saddening is the way they are called nowadays: Blimps. Blimps! Honestly – whoever coined that despicable term should roast eternally in the semantic fires oflanguage hell.Despite the zeppelin gone today, there is a consolation: They will stay with us as an important part of Art Deco retro-SF movie skylines, where heroes such as Sky Captain will makes sure the world will be safe from shiny robots with laserbeams shooting from their swastika eyes.

More retro-deco SF: Terminal City, a graphic novel by Dean Motter.

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