Today in 1884 was probably the birthdate of a pioneer in aerial photography: Edith Keating.
As one newspaper put it, she got “paid to look down on the human race” (!)
We don’t know a ton about Keating’s life, especially her early years.
That’s in part because women photographers in Keating’s time didn’t always get full (or sometimes even partial) credit for their work.
It’s also because Keating was from Halifax, Nova Scotia, and the notorious explosion of a munitions ship in the city’s harbor in 1917 blew up her birth certificate along with a significant portion of the city.
We do know that she was the oldest of five children, that she worked from time to time as a stewardess on steamships and that she started exploring photography along the way.
In 1917, just before the Halifax Explosion, she had applied to serve the American war effort in Europe, but by the time she got the greenlight to travel, World War I was over.
So, instead, Keating hit the road, working odd jobs as she traveled to 43 of the then 48 states.
At one point she was working as a stenographer for a company called Fairchild, whose founder had developed the most effective aerial camera yet.
Keating at first was interested in the photography, less so in the flying.
But eventually she became comfortable with the air and with the camera she had to use while up there.
It weighed 60 pounds, and she said trying to hold the camera in place to take a photo in heavy wind from the airplane could leave her black and blue.
She worked for Fairchild for about five years, eventually leaving to manage an apartment building and leading a pretty quiet life.
Though as Smithsonian notes, she later served as chair of a Manhattan chapter of Woman Flyers of America.
And I bet she had some pretty good stories to share with the group at their meetings.
Today is the first day of the Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival.
Those in the industry know that Toronto’s comedy scene gave us some of the best and funniest comedians and actors of the last 50 years.
So if you see any acts there, you may see those names again in the future.
In 1920s New York, This Woman Typist Became a Pioneering Aerial Photographer (Smithsonian)
Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival
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Image by American Magazine via Google Books