These are some quotes that have inspired, or which reflect my enthusiasm for this work.
"Photography is a strong tool, a propaganda device, and a weapon for the
defense of the environment...and therefore for the fostering of a healthy human
race and even very likely for its survival."
- Eliot Porter
from "In Wildness of the Preservation of the World, Selections and Photographs
by Eliot Porter" - 1962
"Much is missed if we have eyes only for the bright colors. Nature should
be viewed without distinction...She makes no choice herself; everything that
happens has equal significance. Nothing can be dispensed with. This is a common
mistake that many people make: They think that half of nature can be destroyed
- the uncomfortable half - while still retaining the acceptable and the pleasing
side."
- Eliot Porter
"To fly a small plane and see the variety of beauty the USA has to offer
is a thrilling experience. Indeed, with such splendor spread out before me,
I often feel guilty that I am up there alone."
-William A. Garnett (who certainly brought us all with him by bringing such
amazing images back from his flights.)
"To show people the ugly doesn't accomplish much. I came to the conclusion
that I can't really make much of a change in society's attitude towards land
use by just showing them what's wrong. I've come to the conclusion you have
to show them what's right, and inspire them."
-William A. Garnett
"I have often said that the lure of flying
is the lure of beauty.
That the reason flyers fly,
whether they know it or not,
is the aesthetic appeal of flying"
- Amelia Earhart
Mechanical wings allow us to fly, but it is with our minds that we make the
sky ours. The old measures of distance no longer apply, in part because we hop
across the globe in single sittings, but also because in doing so we visit a
place which even just above our homes is as exotic and revealing as the most
foreign destination...flight's greatest gift is to let us look around.
-William Langewiesche
from his book "Inside the Sky" -Pantheon books
"I offered to introduce my friend to [the aerial view]...by taking him
on a flight over Princeton, his hometown. He accepted my offer, and on a crisp
and sunlit morning was surprised by the density of the university campus, by
the alignment of the streets, by the nearness of the New York skyline, by the
extent of the new suburban forest. He was interested in the generational growth
of office parks, the division of the farms, and the inflated architecture of
new houses on small lots like the coming of California to the East. I thought,
specialists may measure the increments of change on the ground and may in fact
disdain the 'naivete' of the untutored aerial view, but with just one short
flight almost anyone can read the outline of the story from up here - in this
case, the conclusion of New Jersey's farming life. The aerial view is a democratic
view. My friend was interested also in local details like the capricious turns
of a certain Hopewell Valley road, and the full extent of a new golf course,
and the pattern of old overgrown cow paths converging on a converted barn, and
a hidden patch of wilderness by a brook, and the torn, shingled roof of another
professor's house. Each earned a comment, But he asked me to circle only when
we came to his own house, built among others near an expensive day school. He
was absorbed, as all people are, by the unexpected proportions and angles and
by the strange lay of a familiar neighborhood.
'It's like seeing your face in the mirror for the first time,' I suggested."
-William Langewiesche
from his book "Inside the Sky"
"The aerial view is something entirely new. We need to admit that it flattens
the world and mutes it in a rush of air and engines, and that it supresses beauty.
But it also strips the facades from our constructions, and by raising us above
the constraints of the treeline and the highway it imposes a brutal honesty
on our perceptions. It lets us see ourselves in context, as creatures struggling
through life on the face of a planet, not separate from nature, but its most
expressive agents. It lets us see that our struggles form patterns on the land,
that these patterns repeat to an extent which before we had not known, and that
there is a sense to them."
- William Langewiesche
from his book "Inside the Sky"
"Especially after moving to the American Southwest, I increasingly felt
I was witnessing the land as a work-in-progress, and that my aerial view was
one of great privilege. Special places beckoned to me, often far out in the
hinterland, and with the occasional luxury of an empty airplane I would go into
slow orbit around them, letting my eyes and heart drink in their gift of beauty.
From above I could see landforms in situ. This was not surgical removal for
the sake of study. I could see all the delicate, living connections of one place
to every other place in a single sweeping gaze. It was as if I was peering into
the dreams of the earth, glimpsing the workings of a vast and rich unconscious
that was chillingly oblivious to my presence. And yet, I felt a strong need
to respond somehow, to make a small offering of my own awareness and appreciation
in return. The camera allowed me to create an artifact of the experience, to
prove to myself that it was real, and to make some small facsimile of it for
others.
I came to terms with these moments as the true impetus behind all my aerial
strivings - to know the sky so I could know the earth more deeply."
-Adriel Heisey
from his article in Whole Earth Magazine
"On our backs in the clouds, looking down at the land, we see constellations
of rock, mythical topography, ancient shores, some shapes chosen and made by
us, others providential, and the fragile shapes of farms, so earnest, naked,
so eloquent of the hopes and labors of men and women. We look down to bless
them"
- Garrison Keillor
From the end of his eloquent Foreword for George Gerster's incredible "Amber
Waves of Grain."
"My aerial photographs are not about abstract visual design; they are
about specific places. They show marks that contain contradictions and mysteries
which raise questions about how we live on the prairie."
-TerryEvans
from the brochure for her show of aerial photographs of the midwestern prairie
at the Smithsonian.