Seeing from Above

The Aerial View in Visual Culture

By: Mark Dorrian (Editor), Frederic Pousin (Editor)

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Hardcover | 24 December 2013 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

Hardcover
336 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
24.13 x 17.15 x 2.54

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The view from above, or the 'bird's-eye' view, has become so ingrained in contemporary visual culture that it is now hard to imagine our world without it. It has risen to pre-eminence as a way of seeing, but important questions about its effects and meanings remain unexplored. More powerfully than any other visual modality, this image of 'everywhere' supports our idea of a world-view, yet it is one that continues to be transformed as technologies are invented and refined. This innovative volume, edited by Mark Dorrian and Frederic Pousin, offers an unprecedented range of discussions on the aerial view, covering topics from sixteenth-century Roman maps to the Luftwaffe's aerial survey of Warsaw to Google Earth. Underpinned by a cross-disciplinary approach that draws together diverse and previously isolated material, this volume examines the politics and poetics of the aerial view in relation to architecture, art, film, literature, photography and urbanism and explores its role in areas such as aesthetics and epistemology. Structured through a series of detailed case studies, this book builds into a cultural history of the aerial imagination.

Industry Reviews

Flying became possible because it was imagined. This is what a history of seeing from above discloses: we visualised angelic mobility before we could design it. In this fascinating collection the open eye of Google Earth retains at its vanishing point a turbulent history of self-elevation... An extraordinarily timely survey of earth from the sky, full of virtuosic new insights, ethical as well as aesthetic implications, and not without its share of vertigo.' - Paul Carter, author and artist 'This book brings out aeriality's multiple dimensions with such force that by the end one feels that - despite our imprisonment to gravity - we really live not on the earth, but at the bottom-most layer of a vast exospherical mirror filled with everything that makes us human.' - Mark Jarzombek, Professor of the History and Theory of Architecture, School of Architecture and Planning, MIT 'This remarkable collection of richly illustrated essays... will become a landmark for any scholar interested in the field of visual culture.' - Vincent Piveteau, Director, Ecole Nationale Superieure de Paysage de Versailles 'In its mapping of what has become our defining world picture, this is truly explication in excelsis.' - Steven Connor, Grace 2 Professor of English, University of Cambridge

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