Stumbling Upon History
By Lane Wallace
November 2006
 The photos were tucked in the back of the gallery, almost hidden behind the colorful nautical scenes and seaside landscapes that typifies most of the commercial paintings sold in town. The photos also featured local landmarks of the harbor, the town and the North Shore coastline—but they stood out from the other artwork in two distinctive ways. For one thing, the only colors in the photos were the subtle shades of sepia-tone brown. And second, it was clear that this entire collection of photographs had been taken from the air.
Looking down on the distinctive New England harbor and headland of Marblehead, Massachusetts — where both my grandfather and my mother were born and raised, and where I'd spent time each summer ever since I was a very tiny little girl — it was also obvious that the moments captured by this particular photographer had occurred many years before I was born. A lot more open land, one-room cottages still perched on the rocky beachside dunes, and FAR fewer sailboats in the harbor.
And yet, even after I confirmed the era by finding dates of 1932, 1934 and 1938 written beneath a number of the photos, it still took me a few minutes to put the pieces together. It wasn't until I came across a delightfully imperfect image of the harbor framed by what appeared to be the shadow of a Piper Cub's door, with a slightly blurred fingerprint in the lower-right quarter of the photo, that the real significance of the prints struck me. These photos had been taken from the sky. In the 1930s. Apparently from a Piper Cub. By a very human photographer/pilot who'd left his mark, quite literally, on the artwork he'd created.
 Suddenly, I wanted to find out more about this person who'd left his artistry and fingerprint for me to find. What was his name? How did he get into flying? How did he end up doing aerial photography? And how on earth did one manage a 9" x 9" negative camera while flying a Piper Cub anyway? I tracked down the owner of the Arnould Gallery, where I'd found the photos. Gene Arnould turned out to be a delightful, energetic and passionate history buff who cheerfully dug out his records and negatives for the images. Arnould had purchased them in 2002 from an aerial photographer named Mal Warnoff, who'd apparently spent a lifetime juggling cameras and control sticks. But the images predated Mal and, even on the negatives, there was no information on who the photographer had been. I was beginning to think of where else I could go for information when Arnould casually added, "You know, the first aerial photograph of this harbor was actually taken in 1912—or so they say."
"1912?"
Arnould nodded. "Yeah, by a local photographer named Fred Orne. Supposedly strapped to the wing of a Burgess biplane. Which, of course, you know were all built here."
It took a minute before that sunk in.
"What kind of biplane? Built where?"
With all the useless factoids about old airplanes I'd ever tucked away in my brain, I'd never heard of a Burgess biplane. Not to mention that Marblehead has never, to my knowledge, had an airport even vaguely within convenient reach. Who on earth would choose to build airplanes here?
"The Burgess aircraft company," Arnould said. "They built seaplanes. I'm told it was one of the first airplane factories in America. Matter of fact, I think Marblehead is even the birthplace of marine aviation, or something like that."
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