Seeing from Above
The Aerial View in Visual Culture
Published on 3. October 2013
Book
Paperback/Softback
336 pages
978-1-78076-461-0 (ISBN)
Description
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.
Reviews / Votes
A collection of 16 extraordinarily rich essays by specialist authors, Seeing from Above explores the rhetorical complexity, cultural significance and various instrumentalities of aerial visuality as it has spread and ramified throughout visual culture at large. * Visual Studies * The collection of writings is, as other reviewers have attested, an extraordinary exposure of seeing from above and the aerial imagination. * Fabrications: The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Target group
College/higher education
Illustrations
99 bw integrated
Dimensions
Height: 232 mm
Width: 154 mm
Thickness: 24 mm
Weight
520 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-78076-461-0 (9781780764610)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
10/2013
1st Edition
I.B. Tauris
€26.49
Available for download
E-Book
10/2013
1st Edition
I.B. Tauris
€26.49
Available for download
Persons
Mark Dorrian holds the Forbes Chair in Architecture at the University of Edinburgh and is Co-Director of the art, architecture and urbanism atelier Metis.
Content
> List of Figures
> Acknowledgements
> List of Contributors
> Introduction/Mark Dorrian and Frederic Pousin
1. Intimate Communiques: Melchior Lorck's Flying Tortoise/ Marina Warner
2. The Meaning of Roman Maps: Etienne Duperac and Antonio Tempesta/Michael Bury
3. Thomas Baldwin's Airopaidia, or the Aerial View in Colour/Marie Thebaud-Sorger
4. European Cities from a Bird's-eye View: The Case of Alfred Guesdon/Jean-Marc Besse
5. Nadar's Aerial View/Stephen Bann
6. Transfiguring Reality: Suprematism and the Aerial View/ Christina Lodder
7. Aerial Views and Cinematism, 1898-1939/Teresa Castro
8. 'The Domain of Rrose Selaby": Dust Breeding and Aerial Photography/David Hopkins
9. The Aviator and the Photographer: The Case of Walter Mittelholzer/Olivier Lugon
10. From the Sky to the Ground: The Aerial View and the Ideal of the Vive Raisonee in Geography during the 1920s/Marie-Claire Robic
11. The Figure from Above: On the Obliqueness of the Plan in Urbanism and Architecture/John Macarthur
12. The City Seen from the Aeroplane: Distorted Reflections and Urban Futures/Nathalie Roseau
13. Vectors of Looking: Reflections on the Luftwaffe's Aerial Survey of Warsaw, 1944/Ella Chmielewska
14. The Aerial View and the Grands Ensembles/Frederic Pousin
15. Robert Smithson and Aerial Art/Gilles A. Tiberghien
16. On Google Earth/Mark Dorrian
> Index
> Acknowledgements
> List of Contributors
> Introduction/Mark Dorrian and Frederic Pousin
1. Intimate Communiques: Melchior Lorck's Flying Tortoise/ Marina Warner
2. The Meaning of Roman Maps: Etienne Duperac and Antonio Tempesta/Michael Bury
3. Thomas Baldwin's Airopaidia, or the Aerial View in Colour/Marie Thebaud-Sorger
4. European Cities from a Bird's-eye View: The Case of Alfred Guesdon/Jean-Marc Besse
5. Nadar's Aerial View/Stephen Bann
6. Transfiguring Reality: Suprematism and the Aerial View/ Christina Lodder
7. Aerial Views and Cinematism, 1898-1939/Teresa Castro
8. 'The Domain of Rrose Selaby": Dust Breeding and Aerial Photography/David Hopkins
9. The Aviator and the Photographer: The Case of Walter Mittelholzer/Olivier Lugon
10. From the Sky to the Ground: The Aerial View and the Ideal of the Vive Raisonee in Geography during the 1920s/Marie-Claire Robic
11. The Figure from Above: On the Obliqueness of the Plan in Urbanism and Architecture/John Macarthur
12. The City Seen from the Aeroplane: Distorted Reflections and Urban Futures/Nathalie Roseau
13. Vectors of Looking: Reflections on the Luftwaffe's Aerial Survey of Warsaw, 1944/Ella Chmielewska
14. The Aerial View and the Grands Ensembles/Frederic Pousin
15. Robert Smithson and Aerial Art/Gilles A. Tiberghien
16. On Google Earth/Mark Dorrian
> Index