< “Medusa Obelia (Jelly-Fish). Spreading and contracting itself in the sea water, a misshapen sun whose rays are threads equipped with darts, that stab minute prey, the medusa turns to our gaze a diagrammatic surface.” Illustration 8 in W. Watson-Baker, World Beneath the Microscope, The Studio, London and New York 1935. Private collection.
Mark Dorrian
_ Figure 1.
W.
We are no longer so excited as formerly by the account of trips on the surface (…) The mind is stretched, uncomfortably sometimes, but with a new fascination, to speed and profundity, to the thought of worlds that lie a million light-years away from us to the worlds that recede in evolutionary time beneath the lens, to the thought even that they merge or that by some extraordinary trick of relativity the smaller may contain the large. There is an affinity between the telescope and the microscope, between the discovery of stellar space and the discovery of the atom.1
Thus wrote the English artist and critic William Gaunt in his introduction to W. Watson-Baker’s World Beneath the Microscope (Fig. 1), published in 1935 by The Studio as the second volume in a projected book series entitled “The New Vision.”2 Gaunt’s report of contemporary cultural ennui with the horizontal and the shift to explorations on the vertical invokes the notion that the view from above – together with its associated technologies, such as the telescope and the microscope – forms a peculiarly modern visual modality. His richly articulated introduction to Baker’s book of microphotography looks back to earlier arguments regarding aerial vision, but at the same time presciently anticipates future manifestations of the new adventure on the vertical, perhaps the most striking of which would come with Charles and Ray Eames’ short film Powers of Ten (1977).3 Moreover, Gaunt’s text – as will be already evident from the short section quoted – alerts us to the kinds of imagined relation with things that were fostered by technologies of “seeing from above”. The diminishment of size through the elevation of vision (as from, for example, an aircraft) or the magnification of the miniscule through the microscope permitted things of radically different scales to enter into new
< Johannes Otzen, Perspective view and plan of the Church of the Holy Cross at Berlin, 1889 (“Deutsche Bauzeitung”, 58, 1889, before p. 345)
Marco Rasch
In the last third of the 19th century, high industrialisation in Germany led to farreaching changes. As a result of mass immigration, cities became denser and spread out into the surrounding areas, bringing with it numerous economic, ecological, infrastructural and social challenges.1 Together with changing aesthetic demands, these led to the emergence of comprehensive urban planning. This was accompanied by a change in the architectural representations of the time. Using the example of the “Deutsche Bauzeitung”, published regularly by the members of the “Architekten-Verein zu Berlin” from 1867 onwards,2 the first part of the article will describe the development from the use of ground and elevation drawings for architectural competitions to perspective drawings. The focus will be on the question of why this change in perspective occurred. Did aerial photography, which became increasingly available in the last quarter of the century, influence the architects involved?
The second part deals with the question of the impact of these photographs on urbanism. When were aerial photographs first used for this purpose? What expectations were placed on them in the study of the development of cities and the underlying design mechanisms? Could the information inherent in photographs help to understand the characteristics and origins of cities? And what difficulties did the viewers of the young aerial photograph encounter, which required new forms of analysis due to the medium?3
The Development of perspective in architectural drawings in the “Deutsche Bauzeitung” of the late 19th century
In the first 15 volumes of the “Deutsche Bauzeitung”, i.e. until 1882, architectural designs for new buildings or conversions are found almost exclusively in the form of ground plans, elevations and sections. Occasional perspective views show exist-
Nathalie Roseau
The topic of the large city has long been at the heart of the relationship between aerial vision and the perception of space. The construction of the aerial urban perspective has a long history, predating aviation and the invention of balloons, when from the top of belfries and belvederes one could discover the panorama of the city and its surroundings. The city has always sought out the possibilities of a view of itself, at street level, from the top of a bell tower or a bird’s eye view. The perceptive devices invented since the classical era have deepened this distancing of the city, figuring and de-realizing it.1
This relation has influenced visual history. Since the first aerostatic ascents and Nadar’s 1858 photographs of Paris and its surroundings, the desire to rise into the air has shaped the evolution of aeronautical travel and visualization techniques, right up to the satellites and drones that now provide us with access, from the ground and via a screen, to otherwise inaccessible views from above. In the meantime, territorial phenomena (urbanization, metropolization, artificialization) have driven progress in the use of aerial representations, equipped with ever more sophisticated visual devices that capture from the skies the ways in which we inhabit the land.
Beyond the question of representation, the relationship between the aerial view and urban perception influences the act of projection. Thus, in 1919, in the aftermath of the First World War, when Paris officially decommissioned its fortifications, the so-called Cornudet Law was also passed, requiring cities with more than 10,000 inhabitants to draw up a comprehensive development plan. The city planners were aided by aerial photographs. Here, the civilian context of urban transformation gave meaning to the techniques of representation that occurred in a military context (that of the air war), feeding a never-ending dialogue. The first development plan for the Paris region, initiated in 1928 by the team of architect Henri Prost, was underpinned by systematic aerial photography campaigns.2 Across the Atlantic, the first Aerial survey of New York was conducted in 1921, a few years after the
Katrin Albrecht
On the threshold of the 20th century, the “aerial” was entering the still young discourse on modern urban design. The evolution of different means of representations of cityscapes published in contemporary European and American urban design literature mirror paradigmatically the process of discovery of the city as a whole, as a new dimension and an autonomous entity, due to the changing perception and experience of urban space and the compilation of knowledge of urban patterns. This emergence encompassing a period of around thirty years marked an important moment both in urban design practice and in theory formation and paralleled the beginnings of the conquest of the air by controlled powered flight.
The discovery of the city as a whole might be – in a less abrupt and a much more diffuse way – comparable to the sensation occurring about half a century later, when the disparate structures of the earth’s surface were seen from outer space in the clear and compact form of a sphere. Thus, the grasping of the city as a whole, which inherently relies on complementary forms of representations, can be interpreted as a preliminary stage of what would again unfold on a much larger scale through the physical conquest of cosmic space. However, this happened at a moment, when the existing historic city had already long since begun to dissolve –when it actually no longer existed in its entity, if it ever did.
Horizontal street view or elevated overview?
In 1893, the urban planning expert Charles Buls, then mayor of Brussels, wrote in his short treatise on the aesthetics of towns (Esthétique des Villes): “It is the horizontal view that architects should mainly be concerned with, not the bird’s-eye view, which can only be appreciated by aeronauts hovering over the city”.1 With this comment, Buls criticised the tendency of architects to design symmetrical configurations that would only have an impact on the paper plan, but not in the city
Sebastian V. Grevsmühl
If we think of “planet Earth” today, many of the images that cross our mind’s eye are the spectacular visual outcomes of space exploration. To put it in other words, our Western, collective imagination of what we call “Earth” today is fundamentally structured by the visual. Yet the views of Earth as seen or imagined from space did not stay immutable over time, and instead have evolved considerably over the past two centuries. Indeed, according to philosopher Hans Blumenberg, whereas Westerners, when thinking of “planet Earth,” in the past imagined an artificial globe suspended in space, we think of Earth today mainly in terms of the visual outcomes of the large space programmes.1 Although globes are still part of what may be called an “iconography of power” (allowing for the expression, for instance, of the global commercial ambitions of multinational corporations), globes were never really able to surpass mostly decorative or rhetorical functions. This is (at least in part) due to their insufficient scale, which proved in many cases not to be very useful in practice, and the substantial production costs that were in most cases far too high to allow globes to become objects of everyday use. As we all know today, it is representations drawn in the plane, i.e. maps, that have become the dominant, privileged visual mode to represent geographical knowledge of planet Earth. However, next to globes and maps, one particular visual mode stands out and has its very own history, a history that is tightly bound to aerial and space exploration: the figure of the terrestrial sphere of which I would like to propose in the following a very brief visual history.
Amongst the first images claiming to show Earth “as one would see it from outer space” is an engraving which is the frontispiece of an influential book in geology, published in 1834 by Henry De la Beche, a respected member of the Royal Society in London (Fig. 1). Several aspects make this image a remarkable contribution to early Earth views from space. First of all, Henry De la Beche decided to commence his geological treatise with a view that is normally reserved to astronomers. Indeed, Earth is shown here as a cosmic object, a planet floating in black space, clearly de-
Ali and the Palm Jumeirah) at the center in the image and the world islands complex just off the downtown area. A network of roads and highways, city streets and mega-towers, parks and neighborhoods, signals a modern oasis with the desert sands on its doorstep. This study in contrasts mirrors development seen in many large Middle Eastern cities such as Kuwait City or Doha, where manipulation of Earth using technology allows humans to inhabit spaces largely considered uninhabitable centuries ago because of the extreme conditions. The scale of development in Dubai, however, also reflects the ingenuity of diversifying the economy for tourism and service with attractions such as the Burj Khalifa, extravagant shopping malls, and exotic beach communities. The transformation can hardly be ignored as one of the locations most clearly shaped by human hands in the nearly six decades that humans have had the ability to live and work in orbit. The scale of expansion is almost unreal. Modern conveniences exist in a place where naturally, none should. These images speak directly to a contemporary ability to literally mold the landscape to any need or desire.
_ Figure 9. The striking contrast of sea and land, sand and city come across vividly in this ISS image, 29 January 2025 (NASA Photo, ISS072-E-574768).
Lilian
< Pulse of Snow and Sea Ice, released May 14, 2012 (copyright: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio)
In the early months of 2002, during the long daylight of the Antarctic summer, a slab of sea ice approximately the size of the state of Connecticut fractured and disappeared into a slush of icebergs over a span of just 35 days. The now-infamous collapse of the Larsen B ice shelf was shocking in its unprecedented speed, unfolding at a rate that defied contemporary knowledge about how ice shelves behaved. Though ice shelves had disappeared before—Larsen A was already gone by then— it was the first time a visual record of such an event had been made, thanks to an array of orbiting instruments gazing down at the ice (Fig.1).
Though they take place far outside the spheres of ordinary human life, the actions of ice sheets at the poles nevertheless have profound consequences for cities, nations, and individuals elsewhere. In addition to their contributions to future sea level rise, the poles, and especially the polar North, play crucial roles as sites of resource extraction, testing grounds, and infrastructural connection. These activities put the poles’ ostensible peripherality into question; indeed, the harder we look, the more these remote regions seem central to scenarios of human futures.
Images of the collapse of Larsen B were captured by NASA’s Terra satellite, which launched in 1999 to produce multispectral imagery of the Earth’s surface every 1 to 2 days, as well as the Canadian Space Agency’s RADARSAT-1. This latter satellite was an unlikely witness, in many ways: RADARSAT had been proposed decades earlier with the chief goal of exploring offshore oil extraction possibilities in the Arctic. Prior to its eventual launch in 1995, however, the satellite had been redesigned to be able to swivel from its original North-looking position in order to take in the Antarctic view as well, a choice which reflected a growing interest in understanding environmental change in the high latitudes. After this modification was made, the main goal for RADARSAT in Antarctica was to complete a satellite map of the continent, which was to be the first of its kind. Polar mapping projects can
Tommaso Morawski
For German philosopher Carl Schmitt, to whom we owe the concept of Raumrevolution, the term spatial revolution indicates a radical change in the way space is conceived, represented and practiced:
Every time when new lands and seas enter the field of vision of human collective consciousness by a new thrust of historical forces, by an unleashing of new energies, the spaces of historical existence also change. Then there emerge new measures and directions of political-historicalactivity, new sciences, new orders, new life for new or reborn peoples. The expansion can be so deep and so surprising that not only quantities and measurements, not only the outermost human horizon, but even the structure of the concept of space itself is altered. Then one may speak of a spatial revolution.1
According to Schmitt, underlying this epochal caesura, this shift of perspective on space and its structure, there is always the irruption of a new technological medium that, once integrated with human practices, provokes a radical change in the relationship between human and their his living environment. For example:
When the airplane came in, a new, third dimension was conquered in addition to land and sea. Now the human raised itself above the surfaces of the land as above surfaces of the sea and received a fully novel means of transport and an equally new weapon in its hands. The weights and measures transformed themselves further, and the possibilities for human domination ascended into innumerable domains. It is understandable that precise the air force [Luftwaffe] is designated as a space force [Raumwaffe]. And indeed, the spatial revolutionary effect that proceed from it is particularly strong, immediate, and plain to see (…). To both the mythic beasts, Leviathan and Behemoth, a third would be added, a great bird.2
A new third dimension, a new elemental domain of human existence, namely the air, was added when the airplane made its first appearance. Over the last one hun-
Lisa Parks
In 1971, Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini made a short film entitled Le Mura Di Sana’a (The Walls of Sana’a). In it, the camera pans admiringly across the capital city’s medieval architecture as Pasolini laments calls for Sana’a’s modernization. Shifting focus to a road built from Sana’a to the Red Sea with support of China, Pasolini worries that the modernization of Yemen is being driven by outsiders and will bring more poverty to an already impoverished population. At the end of the film, Pasolini implores UNESCO to help keep this medieval town intact for the benefit of all Yemenis, and in 1986, Sana’a’s old town was designated a World Heritage Site. As Pasolini’s film imagines Sana’a through a European lens of architectural preservation and global development, it designates this Yemeni city as a vital site of civilization and culture. Some of the very buildings revered in Pasolini’s film have been violently destroyed during the most recent war in Yemen, which has generated lament and loss among Yemenis as well.1
This multilateral civil war began in late 2014 between the Hadi-led “unity” government (aligned with Sunnis) and the Houthi-led Supreme Revolutionary Committee (aligned with the Zydi Shia) as well as their many domestic and foreign supporters. In September 2014, Houthi forces took over Sanaa and mobilized to overthrow the Hadi regime, resulting in a barrage of air strikes by the Saudi-led coalition that was dubbed “Operation Decisive Storm.”2 Between March 2015 and July 2021, the Saudi coalition, supported by US3 and European allies, conducted at least 23,251 air raids throughout the country, including on Sana’a, and killed or injured 18,616 civilians.4 The coalition struck farms, water facilities, and small fishing boats.5 It also blockaded Yemen, preventing humanitarian aid and food from entering the country by air and sea. During the conflict both the Saudis and Houthis were accused of using starvation as a war tactic, as documented in the harrowing film, Hunger Ward. 6 UN representatives pointed to Yemen’s “pandemic of impunity” as serious human rights violations and war crimes went unaccounted for.7
My scholarly interest in Yemen began during my previous research on the me-
Cartographic perspectives, satellite and aerial images, photos, graphics, data visualizations, and timelines—often created digitally and remotely—are used to convey grounded conditions or civilian predicaments. As Caren Kaplan and Rey Chow have observed in their respective work, cartographic renderings have emerged historically within military organizations and as such carry residues of violence and militarization even as they may be mobilized in the interests of peace and justice.30 Thus, politically progressive forensic media investigations like those of Bellingcat and FA draw on and reiterate militaristic iconographies and modes of conflict management that are designed to perform for and communicate with particular kinds of audiences. Media forensics projects are rarely seen, used, or discussed by many of those whose interests these projects purport to account for or “protect.”
Finally, related to the first two points, forensic media are premised on an ideology of media plentitude—that is, the idea that if enough images and visible eviden-
_ Figure 5.
Screen captures of select newspapers featuring headlines, images, and stories regarding an airstrike on a prison in Saada, Yemen on January 21, 2022. Reproduced under the Fair Use Doctrine.
_ Figure 6.
Screen capture of a January 22, 2022 news story in The Guardian featuring a drone view of the airstrike aftermath at a prison in Saada, Yemen credited to the Houthi’s Ansar Allah Media Office. The Houthi’s explanatory ticker at the bottom of the screen is in Arabic and is blurred. Reproduced under the Fair Use Doctrine.
ce are gathered and arranged, evil-doers will be brought to justice. Despite all of the news reports and forensic analyses, the flows of European and US military weapons and financing continue to support the Saudi coalition’s air strikes and Houthis’ aggression in response. Given this, it is important to recognize the ways that news media and forensic media can also function as what Matthew Fuller and Andrew Goffey call “evil media.” As the authors insist, media do not just document, represent, and tell truths: they do things. They “incite and provoke, twist and bend, leak and manage.”31
News reports about the war in Yemen directly influence and shape chains of causality within and knowledge about the conflict, a point to which I will return later. For now, it is not possible to separate war or geopolitics from mediation in the current conjuncture. We must do away with facile definitions of coverage that are founded on ideals of exposure, revelation, and transparency since all media are always already a bit dirty/evil. Because of this, it is important to consider what anti-militaristic mediation might look, sound, and feel like, whether it emerges in something like Pasolini’s film or other forms.
On January 21, 2022, air attacks on a prison in the northwestern city of Sadaa killed more than 91 people and injured 236.32 The Saudis were assumed to be responsible but denied the attack. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned the strikes and called for investigations.33 Headlines emphasized the fatal air assault on the prison, announcing “Saudi-Led Airstrikes Kill Scores at a Prison in Yemen” (the New York Times), “Dozens Killed in Saudi-led coalition air raid on Yemen prison” (Al Jazeera), and “Scores Killed in Yemen prison air strike carnage” (the BBC) (Fig. 5). Several reports featured drone video or photos of the aftermath scene released by the Houthi’s Ansar Allah Media Office. When embedded in international news media, Houthi images recorded to document destruction, death, and injury resulting from alleged Saudi airstrikes can be turned on their head so to speak and used to excuse or legitimate the actions of those flying above. In some reports, for instance, drone views of the grim aftermath appear beneath headlines declaring Saudi denials or calling for probes or UN investigation, casting doubt as to whether the Saudis were responsible. “The Guardian” referred to the prison as “rebel-run” as a way of implicitly sanctioning the attack. (Fig. 6) 34 Its report diminished Houthi perspectives in other ways as well. The outlet published Ansar Allah drone video of the prison attack scene yet blurred its source details and ticker, effacing Houthi ownership of and commentary on the footage.35 This digital effect may have been used to insulate the liberal news outlet from publishing what might be deemed as inflammatory Islamic extremist speech, yet “The Guardian” proceeded with this doctored version anyway, exploiting Houthi content while silencing its anti-American “voice.” I do not mean to cast the Houthis as victims here, but rather I want to point to the extractive dynamics of international news media.
Western news outlets draw on Houthi footage presumably because they do not have affiliated correspondents on site, but this move is also economically-driven.