The Aerial Imagination

Abstract

Aerial photographs are normally used to tell quite conventional stories about archaeological sites and landscape. Aerial photographs have been used by archaeologists to interrogate site complexes and landscape since the early twentieth century. The aerial archaeological photograph is formed through a multiplicity of accumulated times that are captured in a moment when pressing the camera button. The aerial imagery that is produced allows forensic and searchable playback in a period of exposure after the events that the camera has captured, tracking objects and people. In an aerial photograph archaeological features return our gaze as if conveying generations of moments through time. Acknowledging the ‘ecology’ of practices involved in producing aerial photographs, from farming to flying, is to acknowledge that there is no magic power in images of the past made with an airborne camera. Filmmaker Patrick Keiller has explored the relationships between technology and visual reality by altering and advancing the spatio- temporal dimensions of photographic and film capture.