Cassio Vasconcellos’ photo looks like an air traffic controller’s nightmare: Hundreds of planes crammed on a tarmac in an intricate web of terminals and jetways.
"Airport" is among the nine claustrophobic scenes in his series Collectives. The parking lot choked with cars, the highway overrun by motorcycles, and the beach packed with bodies aren't real---Vasconcellos assembled them in Photoshop from thousands of images---but the sense of dread and unease they provoke is real. It's a statement on the impact an ever-growing population is having on the planet.
"I’m always impressed by the size of everything—how we get food for everyone, water for everyone, transportation for everyone," Vasconcellos says. "The demands of humanity are getting bigger and bigger."
The Brazilian photographer started the series eight years after learning that five million cars clog the streets of São Paulo—a number so astounding he couldn’t picture it. That spawned an idea. He photographed parking lots from a helicopter, and cloned the images in Photoshop to create a 40-foot tapestry of 50,000 cars. “It’s just one percent of the cars in my city,” he says.
"Airport" depicts just 250 airplanes, but was far more complicated. Vasconcellos made 20 visits to five airports throughout the state of São Paulo, renting a helicopter to fly overhead during lulls in takeoffs and landings. He aimed his Canon 5D Mark II straight down, photographing as many types of planes and jet bridges as possible. For the hubs, he shot a couple dome-shaped buildings in São Paulo.
Vasconcellos and an assistant spent some 800 hours in Photoshop cutting out the pieces. He arranged the airport infrastructure and planes in a mesmerizing composition that riffs on the patterns neurons make in the brain. “For me, it’s the design of this globalized world we live in,” Vasconcellos says.
His photos depict a crowded world not so different from the real one. Except in Vasconcellos' world, your flight definitely will be delayed.
