Taking Measures Across the American Landscape

An amazing book by James Corner and Alex Maclean that combines aerial photography and the concept of measurement to stunningly illustrate a new prism through which to view the land.

This is no mere book of photography. It is a methodology with which to call for a new paradigm.

"From the detached and synoptical view of the bird, the modern paradox is graphically expressed in the constructions and traces that mark the ground. From above, the various relationships among physical dimensions, human activities, natural forces, and cultural values can be seen as orderly, productive, and sophisticated as they are brutal and errant.

Maclean's photographs are staggering in their execution--as geometically coaxing as they are visually inviting. He teases at once both pattern and chaos from the land viewed from above.

Corner adds his map-drawings, fascinating overlays of markigns, dimensional equations, and cartographic data on USGS maps that in his words, "embody and attempt to acknowledge the primacy of rational, synoptic measure in the forging of the American landscape while revealing the fictional and metaphorical dimensions of the land's construction."

Some examples of Corner's work: