When photography’s truthfulness took flight: Alfred Buckham

You would think that in the early 1900s, a rare view of a volcano or Durham’s landscape from above would be enough to make an awe-inspiring image, but daredevil photographer Captain Alfred G Buckham took his images to new heights beyond reality through innovative darkroom fine-tuning. Buckham was doctoring images of the skies long before Photoshop, AI, and filtered Instagram stories. The cost of his art was nine life-altering crashes, but even this would not stop him from taking to the skies, loosely tying his leg to the cockpit’s chair, and gathering more than 1,400 negatives of the world from above. 

Buckham was a First World War Royal Navy pilot whose love for photography took him across the globe, capturing volcanoes, South America, and even Durham from above. For most people, the aerial view was entirely new, and Buckham delivered it in a clarity and beauty never seen before. In the skies, Buckham privileged sharpness over safety. He would balk at the instinct to grip the sides of the cockpit for balance when he stood to take a photograph of the world turning dizzyingly below, lest the rumble of the engine ruin a sharp exposure. He was similarly exacting about using glass plate negatives for their superior sharpness, despite film being cheaper and more available. He even favoured a camera built for (grounded) newspaper reporters, rejecting those specially made for the fledgling field of aerial photography. But Buckham’s choice of camera did not signal a commitment to reporterly truth in the final prints he produced. Within the confines of the time and the cockpit, Buckham’s art is nothing less than breathtaking.

Each print he made was unique and unrepeatable down to the most granular detail

The most endearing aspect of Buckham’s photography is the work he did on the ground, in the darkroom. Buckham would first select a negative of a cityscape. Then he would find a negative of a sky, perhaps thunder clouds, which carefully mirrored the rise and fall of the landscape. Finally, he would add an image of a plane which he had taken from the ground, using an enlarger to project the plane’s negative onto the same light sensitive paper. He would use ‘dodging’ and ‘burning’, black watercolour, and even scratched out highlights on the final print’s paper to make the composite of three negatives appear seamlessly spontaneous. A beautiful consequence of this intense tailoring meant that each print he made was unique and unrepeatable down to the most granular detail. This process should remind us of the care behind constructing a photograph, long before digital tools made art endlessly reproducible and thoughtlessly automated. Each shadow, cloud curl, and bright highlight was finely curated by Buckham, making each print a work of art. 

Buckham photographed across the globe, yet one of his most breathtaking prints happens to be of Durham. The cathedral’s size is dwarfed by bright rolling peaks of thunder clouds, with evidence on the print that Buckham blended the three negatives using ‘dodging’. Dodging is a darkroom technique where some parts of the negative’s projection are shielded by a stick or a piece of paper to lighten these areas on the print. The detail of Durham’s cathedral is reduced through this dodging technique; it feels as though we are squinting at it through a cloud, making the city a faint afterthought to the dark sky and climbing aeroplane. which command the centre of the print. The River Wear is dark, with glowing bridges (showing signs of dodging) which are each interrupted by the edges of the print, emphasising the uniqueness of Durham’s nimble peninsular.

But why would Buckham choose to add on the third negative of the airplanes to his compositions, which work beautifully without them? Their presence feels self-referential, like the addition of a paintbrush and mirror in a self-portrait. The addition of the planes quietly reminds the viewer of how the photograph was taken. Very few people would have seen the world from this perspective, so for most, half of the image’s pageant was exactly the fact of how it was crafted. Adding the planes celebrates them as an artistic method and disrupts any illusion of omniscience. It makes the image feel more real, despite being a cosmetic addition.

With such singular freedom to photograph the world from any height, angle and distance, it’s impressive that the prints Buckham created feel so intentional and well-composed

With such singular freedom to photograph the world from any height, angle and distance, it’s impressive that the prints Buckham created feel so intentional and well-composed. There is no sign of accident, nor any sense that the image was constrained. Buckham’s photographs of South America particularly demonstrate a skillful curation of composition, a fact emphasised through evident traces of darkroom editing. In his print of the Statue of Christ on Corcovado, ‘burning in’ appears to be used around the edges of the mountain to darken and bring it forward against the light background. Burning in is another darkroom technique of adding a few extra seconds to some parts of the negative’s exposure when it is projected onto the light sensitive paper to darken it  —  the opposite of dodging. 

Perhaps Buckham’s most striking image is that of the crater of Popocatepetl, an active volcano spewing poisonous plumes towards Buckham’s fragile aircraft and even more fragile health, a lasting result of his nine crashes. The teetering danger of the photograph’s craft is palpable in the print, with the thin edge of the crater emphasised with a clear dose of darkroom dodging. Finer highlights of the snow may have been scratched by Buckham to bring through the shining white of the paper. Around the top of the print, burning in is finely used to suggest the consuming dark of the bursting soot, eclipsing the sky. The force of the eruption may also have been exaggerated by Buckham through a slim line of dodging creating a clear channel of air in the middle of the photograph, coming from a burnt-in, ominous center. 

Exaggerating emotion clearly mattered more to Buckham than strict, documentary accuracy. Buckham was an artist, crafting his vision of the world, heightening the impressions he felt in these landscapes, impressions that are a privilege to share in now. His photography is still frequently exhibited and discussed today, with his work currently on display in Edinburgh’s National Portrait Gallery. People remain undeniably captivated by his willingness to manipulate a medium we often associate with truth and accuracy. Today, photography’s claim to reality has been eroded by AI. We can no longer believe everything we see, but I feel that Buckham can remind our generation that effort and emotion is part of art’s majesty. 

Images by Alfred Buckham, kindly shared with us by Richard and John Buckham.