These photos/postcards are most likely montages, not real photos. Photographic techniques made it possible to create these (more-or-less) convincing scenes in a way that other art techniques could not be so realistic. Such montages speak to the twin fascination with Stonehenge, that mysterious, ancient monument standing alone on the plain: and with heavier-than-air flight, which by contrast was just a few years old, novel, alien to most people in its own way just as the deep past was also unfamiliar. Artistic responses to Stonehenge, they were nevertheless made in a commercial context as part of both a growing souvenir market and expansion in print-media technology of photographic reproduction and easy dissemination, where the ancient and the futuristic were equally intriguing.
Caption: Katy Whitaker (Historic England)
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