DRONESCAPES and AERIALS—particularly those that exclude the horizon—occupy a borderland between landscape and abstraction. They function as “concrete abstractions,” simultaneously documentary and aesthetic. The great aerial photographers—William Garnett, Arthus-Bertrand, Edward Burtynsky, Tom Hegen, and the highly accomplished but less widely known Icelanders Sigurgeir Sigurjónsson and Ragnar Axelsson—share a precise, masterful sense of composition. Their images occasionally drift into figuration, though this is rarely acknowledged.
Fun fact: Early abstract painting (c. 1910) drew inspiration from hot-air balloon photography and often assumed geometric forms—much like the patterns of agriculture seen from the air today.
