Manhattan, the Hoover Dam, the freeways of Los Angeles - Fairchild Aerial Surveys mapped the early-20th century world much as satellites record the earth today. Sherman Fairchild engineered a shutter fast enough to produce pictures this accurate from 10,000 feet and turned aerial photography into an industry. (This shot of New York was taken on February 27, 1933.) The bird's-eye perspective shifted the way we understood and developed urban environments. Like Space Imaging Inc. today, Fairchild Aerial worked for government planners, real estate developers, and newspapers; by 1935, the firm boasted a library of some 200,000 shots from around the globe. When Fairchild was bought out in 1965, the archive dissolved and ended up in various universities and forgotten in library basements. Now 125 of those photographs - most never before published - have been collected in the book Cities of the Sky, by Thomas J. Campanella (Princeton Architectural Press, 2001). Despite our media-saturated age, the images have not lost their power. They capture the optimism and exuberance of the past 100 years and recall our love affair with the silver skyline.
ELECTRIC WORD
Naughty Bits
A Sky-High Perspective
Vitamin T
Past Forward
Live Wire
Testing The Waters
