NEW WINDOW ON A GENOCIDE

The World War I aviation historical society Cross & Cockade International (CCI) has unveiled aerial photography depicting devastated villages and settlements in the Armenian Highlands, the scene of widespread atrocities

- PETER DYE

The First World War witnessed a rapid advance in new technologies, notably aircraft. Nowhere was this more evident than in the field of aerial photography. By 1917, all the belligerents had developed sophisticated systems for taking, processing and interpreting aerial imagery. Because of their well-established pre-war photographic industry and high-quality optical glass, the German Air Service was one of the most advanced in this field, employing high-resolution cameras. German aerial photographers were present on all fronts, from Finland to as far south as Cairo, creating over 1.5 million individual images, the bulk of these covering areas that had never previously been photographed.

One of the remote regions where German photographers were active was the Armenian Highlands in the Ottoman Eastern Provinces, where the Ottoman and Russian armies had been fighting since the first months of the war. Flying fragile biplanes, at a height of several thousand metres, German and Ottoman airmen used hand-held glass plate cameras to photograph the villages and towns in an effort to locate Russian Army positions.

Thirteen sepia prints from some of these images were recently found in France. How they reached France from the Armenian Highlands is unknown. What we do know is they represent the first known aerial photos of the region and, just as importantly, offer new evidence of the destruction that followed the forced deportations of 1915-16 when the Ottoman authorities sent the Armenian population to concentration camps in the Syrian desert.