Earth from Above

The Story

Yann Arthus-Bertrand’s “Earth from Above” is one of my favourite photography collections. More than 500,000 photos have been taken in around 150 countries.

Yann started his “Earth from Above” journey back in 1994, born from a dream for a general survey on the state of the earth. It was a project that could only have materialised through the passion and determination of his whole team.

“Year 2000 was almost upon us, and I wanted to tackle an ambitious long-term project. Since the lions, nature has been one of my chief concerns, though I was then less committed to sustainable development and more interested in the preservation of exceptional sites. However, working on location soon made me realise that Man cannot be dissociated from the landscape. Gradually, I became convinced that supporting the theories on sustainability was the way towards a reasoned form of development.

Getting support in terms of investment was difficult, nobody believed in the ‘Earth from above’ project at first. After much battling however, the team managed to get the necessary logistic and financial support. Under the patronage of UNESCO, the team was invited to fly over certain countries. The first break came as Club Med ordered a book on its holiday villages seen from the air, other helped soon followed with Kuwait from above, Morocco from the air. Important support came from FUJIFILM in the form of free film and processing. But even with all this initial support, Yann had to borrow money and invest his own.

Early in 1999, Yann suddenly has doubts, he wasn’t ready to publish yet and wanted to spend one more year flying and collecting views. Yann’s ambition was that the book be as popular and financially accessible as possible and thankfully the publisher left him free to make the book he wanted and name the public price.

As a result of this project, the team has been to over 150 countries to date, photographs of thousands of sites have been taken, and it still monopolises a great deal of time and energy from all involved.

Yann and his team’s approach is to show us the world we live in. Their subject is our Earth and its inhabitants, captured with humility and curiosity in a portrait the onlooker may personally relate to. Meaning has prevailed over formal beauty, and a good photograph, with the power to challenge, instruct and move us, has always been preferred to a beautiful image. The importance given to the captions is an effort to develop the pedagogical dimension of the project.

Though it invites us all to take our own responsibilities, this testimony remains resolutely optimistic. Each portrait, be it of the Earth or its inhabitants, aims at showing the best in order to appeal to what is best in us. In order for us to want to protect, we must first learnt to understand and love our planet.

The Photos

Here is a selection of a few of my favourite Earth from Above photos

Caption: In the nineteenth century West Africa received its first cotton seeds of the Gossypium hirsutum variety, which originated in the British Antilles and remains the most widely cultivated kind of cotton in the world. At the beginning of the twentieth century this raw material represented 80 percent of the world textile market (47 percent today), and the European colonial powers encouraged cotton production in order to break the export monopoly of the United States and Egypt. Harvested manually at a rate of 33 to 80 pounds (15 to 40 kg) per worker per day in tropical Africa, the cotton crop is then put through gins in order to separate fibre, seeds, and waste. One ton of cotton yields 880 pounds (400 kg) of fibres and 1,200 pounds (560 kg) of seeds, which are processed for human consumption (as oil) or for animals (cattle cakes). In northern Côte d’Ivoire, especially in the Korhogo region, cotton plantations, the main cash crop, take up 590,000 acres (240,000 hectares). The country’s cotton output, nearly 300,000 tons, produced by more than 150,000 planters, is only a small fraction of world production; but nationally it counterbalances the agricultural domination in the south of the country, where the great plantations (cacao, palm oil, rubber, pineapple) are concentrated.

Caption: At a length of 1,550 miles (2,500 km) along the northeastern coast of Australia, with more than 400 types of coral, the Great Barrier Reef is the largest coral formation in the world. This rich, silent sanctuary of submarine life was declared a marine park in 1979 (comprising 15 percent of the world’s protected sea surface) and a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1981. The Great Barrier Reef harbours more than 1,500 species of fish and 4,000 mollusks, as well as such animals as the endangered dugong (sea cow) and six of the seven species of sea turtle. Coral formations, the world’s only relief that is biological in nature, are polyps that live symbiotically with photosensitive algae, zooxanthellae, which contribute to the development of the calcareous skeletons of their hosts. The coral reefs are essential to the protection of the coasts and of ocean fauna. They are sensitive to the smallest increase in water temperature, which can cause them to whiten. This phenomenon, which was particularly noticeable in 1998 (during El Niño), caused the loss of thousand-year-old corals. Many of the affected coral colonies are starting to regenerate, but the growing frequency of the whitening phenomenon, which could result from global warming, is disturbing.

Caption: More than 5 million Paulistanos’ residents of São Paulo, Brazil live in working-class suburbs in crowded buildings known as cortiços. The workers districts illustrate the changes that have taken place in São Paulo as it has grown from 250,000 inhabitants in 1900 to 26 million today. Now the largest urban centre in Brazil and all of South America, this megalopolis occupies 3,100 square miles (8,000 km2), more than three times the size of greater Paris. It is home to 41 percent of Brazil’s industry, provides half of manufactured goods in the country, and houses nearly 45 percent of the Brazilian work force. Yet since 1970 another type of residence has spread here in the country’s most prosperous city: favelas, slums that today house 20 percent of Paulistanos. The increasing inequality between rich and poor, along with its attendant social ills, is a problem throughout the nation and the entire continent.