Waterloo Library, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada; and
the Aerial Archive of the Institute for Prehistory
and Protohistory of the University of Vienna.
Aerial photography is an important genre
within fine-arts photography as well. From the
austere black and white photography of Hiroshi
Hamaya, whose striking photographs of the Hi-
malayan mountains and deserts and wild places
around the world gave new views to nature in
the 1960s to Emmet Gowin’s documentation of
post-eruption Mount St. Helens in Washington
State in 1980–1986 and more recent examinations
of the changes wrought by atomic blast sites and
mining of his ‘‘Changing the Earth’’ series, con-
temporary photographers have created memorable
aerial images.
Many nature photographers utilize aerial photo-
graphy as one of the available vantage points to
capture their subjects. Notable in this regard are
Indian photographer Subhankar Banerjee with his
photographs of the Artic National Wildlife Refuge
at the turn of the century. Most modern aerial
photography is accomplished through the use of
airplanes or helicopters using gyroscopically stabi-
lized cameras, but a significant number of profes-
sionals and amateurs use radio-controlled drones
or even kites.
Kite aerial photography was in fact pioneered by
Chicago self-taught photographer and business-
man George R. Lawrence in 1906 to capture extra-
ordinary wide-angle views of the devastation in the
aftermath of the San Francisco earthquake. In an
era before flight and when the volatile gases used in
balloons could be extremely dangerous, thus limit-
ing aerial photography, Lawrence’s large-scale
views caused an international sensation. Aerial
photographer Robert Cameron had devoted his
practice to aerial documentations of the major
cities and scenic or historic sites of the world in a
series of popular books such asAbove Londonof
1980 orAbove Yosemiteof 1983.
Aerial photography can also be practiced from
vantage points offered by skyscrapers; Margaret
Bourke-White’s pioneering efforts of the 1930s
being notable examples; Oscar Graubner’s 1931
photo of her perched atop an ornament of the
Chrysler Building at work with her camera is an
icon of twentieth century photography. Bourke-
White was also a pioneer of capturing the skyscape
from an aerial perspective, creating such striking,
almost abstract images asB-36 at High Altitude,
Flying over Wichita, Kansas, 1951. New York City
in fact has been photographed ‘from above’ by
numerous photographers, from the well known
such as Bourke-White to the lesser known, such
as the Hungarian photographer Gyo ̈rgy Lo ̋rinczy
who documented the city in the late 1960s.
At the turn of the twenty-first century, much
aerial photography was being accomplished thro-
ugh use of digital technology and remote sensing or
‘‘the science and art of obtaining information about
an object, area, or phenomenon through the analy-
sis of data acquired by a device that is not in contact
with the object, area, or phenomenon under inves-
tigation’’ (Lillesand and Kiefer,Remote Sensing and
Image Interpretation) had become a field within the
discipline. As the human eye becomes increasingly
removed from direct observation of the physical
world, whether in aerial or other photography, the
range of images captured and the ability to interpret
them will become increasingly complex.
AliHossaini
Seealso:Bourke-White, Margaret; Gowin, Emmet;
Hamaya, Hiroshi; National Geographic; Propa-
ganda;WarPhotographyFurther Reading
Antenucci, John, Kay Brown, Peter Croswell and Michael
Kevany.Geographic Information Systems: An Introduc-
tion to the Technology. New York: Van Nostrand Rhein-
hold, 1991.
Evans, Charles. ‘‘Air War Over Virginia.’’Civil War Times
Oct. (1996): 1–7.
Hossaini, Ali.Archaeology of the Photograph. Ann Arbor,
MI: UMI Microforms, 1994.
Lillesand, Thomas M. and Ralph W. Kiefer,Remote Sen-
sing and Image Interpretation, 3rd ed., New York: John
Wiley and Sons, 1994.
MacDonald, D. Air Photography.Journal of the Optical
Society of AmericaXLIII (4) (1953): 290–298.
Muehrcke, Philip C. and Juliana O. Muehrcke.Map Use:
Reading, Analysis, Interpretation. Madison, WI: J.P.
Publications, 1992.
Peebles, Curtis.The Corona Project: America’s First Spy
Satellites. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1997.
Ray, Sidney F.The Lens and All Its Jobs. New York: Focal
Press, 1977.AERIAL PHOTOGRAPHY