in World War I, but by World War II lighter-than-
air craft were replaced by airplanes. Development
intensified during the Cold War. In the 1950s high-
performance spy planes cruised the stratosphere,
but, with the Soviet downing of an American U-2
in 1960, officials on both sides of the conflict rea-
lized that orbiting satellites were the safest option.
The Soviet Union orbited the first surveillance
satellite, but it was rapidly followed by the Corona
program of the United States. The first generations
of spy satellites ejected bulky containers of film
into the atmosphere, but these were replaced by
high resolution video signals.
To this day military and intelligence bureaus
have been the prime innovators of aerial photogra-
phy. Every aspect of the medium is subject to con-
stant improvement. Airplanes and spacecraft have
been improved, lenses have staggering resolution
and digital technology has replaced analog signals.
Aerial photography is of such importance that its
full capabilities at any given time are a state secret.
Surveillance programs were kept hidden for many
years, and there is a lag of decades between the
collection of military photographs and their release
for other uses.
The dominance of the United States at the end
of the twentieth century cannot be overstated. The
satellites of Russia, France and a few other space-
going nations offer little competition to the ex-
tensive surveillance network maintained by the
United States. During the Cold War aerial imagery
mostly served strategic purposes, but the U.S. mi-
litary is now creating systems that offer live ima-
gery of battlefields from satellite and aircraft,
notably the Predator drone used in Serbia, Afgha-
nistan, and Iraq in the last decade of the twentieth
century. Building on Civil War technologies, com-
puters overlay battlefield images with an informa-
tion grid that provides a tactical advantage to
combat soldiers.
Aerial photography has also found ample civilian
application. Commercial applications include ar-
chitecture, construction, urban planning and other
development schemes, the travel industry, advertis-
ing applications of various sorts, publishing, es-
pecially in such popular magazines as National
Geographic, and agriculture. The Aerial Photo-
graphy Field Office, Farm Service Agency is the
primary source of aerial imagery for the U.S.
Department of Agriculture, holding over 10 million
images from 1955 to the early 2000s in an archive
accessible at http://www.apfo.usda.gov/.
In the scientific realm, multispectral cameras
have become essential tools for geographers, ocea-
nographers, ecologists and even archeologists. For
instance, an aerial archive of Middle Eastern arche-
ological sites was established in 1978 under the
patronage of Crown Prince Hassan bin Talal of
Jordan, which consists of over 8,000 photographs
and several hundred maps. Aerial photography’s
application in ecological and conservation efforts
has been particularly front and center. Satellite
imagery can precisely track large-scale changes
in forests, deserts, oceans and other physical phe-
nomena. Some artists have joined scientists in
the skies, creating portfolios of merit, including
the lush, colorful work of French photojournalist
Yann Arthus-Bertrand with his massive ‘‘Earth
from Above’’ series. Shown to huge crowds in
venues around the world, Arthus-Bertrand’s aerial
photography has proven to be a useful tool for
ecological awareness. He has instigated a world-
wide organization to raise awareness of ecologi-
cal concerns, including a professional organization,
Altitude, which features international aerial photo-
graphers on its website. Often the reverse can hap-
pen, with photographs taken by those who would
identify themselves primarily as scientists taking
on considerable aesthetic value, such as Bradford
Washburn’s pioneering aerial views of Alaska’s
mountains and glaciers, including such starkly
beautiful images as Miles Glacier—Dead Ice at
NW Edge, 1938.
Aerial photography has become ubiquitous in
the daily government of urban societies, joining
cartography and surveillance as an essential tool
of governance. Citizens of industrial nations can be
surreptitiously photographed dozens of times a day
in low aerial view by government and corporate
cameras. Virtually every square meter of land in
industrial nations has also been photographed in
cartographic perspective from aircraft and satellites
at a variety of scales. This visual information has
been incorporated into Geographic Information
Systems (GIS) that composite photographs with
maps, political boundaries, property titles and
other data. In most developed countries, private
photographers also offer aerial services, often
shooting homes or landscapes on commission for
a range of clients, often as ‘‘portraits’’ of an indi-
vidual’s or family’s property.
Many university libraries collect aerial pho-
tographs for historical and research purposes.
Notable collections include the University of Cali-
fornia, Berkeley; the Fairchild Aerial Photography
Collection at Whittier College, Whittier, California,
featuring historical views of that state; the Aerial
Photography Collection at the University of Ore-
gon Library, featuring some 525,000 aerial photo-
graphs of Oregon from 1925 onward; University ofAERIAL PHOTOGRAPHY