Past to Present : Vintage Photo Exhibits

Our March 07 exhibition will present a series of photographs from the archive of Charles Gilbert.

Gilbert presented himself as Pilote, Aeronaute et Constructeur (pilot, aeronaut and builder) and was giving exhibition flights with his Aerocycle Rotateur (bicycle attached to a balloon) from the mid 1880's.

After several years giving his exhibitions flights in France and Russia, Gilbert moved to Moscow in 1898 where he continues his experiments with lighter than air flight and becomes an instructor at Polytechnic Institute in Moscow.

Gilbert came back to France during WWI before the Russian Revolution of October 1917 and it's most likely that he assembled his photo archive in very basic paper books after returning to France. We chose to remove the photographs from the books a few years ago to store the photographs in archival sleeves.

Start

Charles Gilbert was the proud owner of a panoramic camera that he used as often as possible as illustrated in the following pages. Although the photos are not signed, Gilbert shot many of them but he also appears in some.

The decision to break this archive was not easy but we tried to keep related photos together in groups. This exhibition presents the ballooning part of the archive. Aviation related photographs will be offered at a later date.

A new exhibition is added every 2 to 3 months, depending on our inventory and new acquisitions.
The subjects we plan to showcase next are 19th century opera singers and circa 1910 aviation featuring pioneers Bleriot and Chavez.

© 1998-2022 by Laurent Brocard - Bits of Our Past Ltd - http://www.past-to-present.com