Things look different from up in the air.
This was the realization that inspired The Altitude Project, an ongoing series of expeditions to explore landscape and infrastructure through aerial photography and investigative research. We focus on sites across North America that embody the complexities of sweeping changes in energy, wildlife, and other aspects of the human condition with and amongst the environment.
Our storytelling projects combine aerial and terrestrial photography with onsite observations, oral history interviews, and independent research to produce accounts of North America’s changing landscapes.
In our individual experiences, we’re often limited to the intimate, terrestrial scale. Satellite images and remote sensing, alternately, offer glimpses at broad scales that abstract communities into pixels and data points.
We offer an intermediary scale by means of light aircraft aviation, which allows us to connect the personal and planetary levels of experience — visually, conceptually, and relationally. This middle distance allows us to observe expansive material and cultural transformations and to locate ourselves among the communities who experience the most direct impacts of change.
The Altitude Project