Designs on the Land Exploring America from the Air

by MacLean, Alex S.; Besse, Jean-Marc; Corner, James; Tiberghien, Gilles A.

• ISBN13: 9780500284148
• ISBN10: 0500284148
• Edition: 00
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-05-17
• Publisher: Thames & Hudson

Summary

The tradition of aerial photography arose from a keen nineteenth-century desire to see "the world in motion." Starting with Nadar's photographic balloon trips, airborne experimentation with landscapes and cityscapes continued through great photographers from Steichen to Burkhardt. With Alex MacLean, we enter a different world. For thirty years, this committed photographer has portrayed the history and evolution of the American land, from great desert spaces to agricultural patterns to city grids. A trained architect who is closely involved in landscape heritage protection issues, MacLean has set out to create a series of pictures that show and explain the universal history of town and countryside. What he has to say may be invigorating or alarming, but it always raises the issue of the landscape's future. This new collection of exemplary photographs taken across the American landscape reflects MacLean's passionate interest in the effects of time, geological movements, shifting landscapes, redeployment, pollution, urban sprawl, and the overlapping of surfaces and activities. More than 400 color photographs reveal in a unique way the physical splendor of America: both the beauty of the ongoing inhabiting of the land and the potential for modern planning to create spectacular environments.

Table of Contents

The Aerial American Landscape	8	(12)
James Sorner
Alex S. MacLean	20	(18)
The American Grid
City Grid	38	(18)
Native Americans	56	(14)
Agriculture	70	(22)
Forest	92	(18)
Abandonment	110	(20)
Borders	130	(18)
Learning From Maclean	148	(6)
Gilles A. Tiberghien
Interview with Alex S. Maclean	154	(48)
Gilles A. Tiberghien
Alex S. MacLean	202	(16)
Desert Agriculture
Energy	218	(18)
Housing	236	(22)
Pollution	258	(14)
Parking	272	(20)
Sprawl	292	(24)
Scale	316	(20)
Aerial Geography	336	(29)
Jean-Marc Besse
Bibliography	365	(3)
Acknowledgments	368