Publications: British Journal of Photography 2002

American sky: Alex Maclean's aerial shots

By Simon Bainbridge

Excerpts from the article:

"Alex MacLean has piloted his single-engine Cessna across much of the United States, documenting the landscape from above. Since founding his own commercial aerial photography company in 1975 he has amassed a collection of more than 350,000 images...Increasingly, he is also being recognized for his non-commissioned pictures that throw a more analytical perspective on America's insatiable drive to harness its rich landscape.

The series, shown in Arles and to be exhibited again in Paris next spring, captures the magnificence of the built environment, but also describes the unrelenting crawl of lesiure culture. His pictures map out the dilemma of the American dream: the freedom of the wilderness and the desire to conquer it. It is difficult not to be impressed by the immense scale and abstract patterns in the compositions, not the energy with which Americans seize every last patch of land for recreation. But the photographs also provide evidence of the destructive predominance of the automobile, and consumerism's spreading containment of the natural environment.

The Massachusetts-based photographer is now frequently commissioned to analyze the effects of sprawl, and has contributed to a number of books and debates outlining strategies for alternative development patterns...His work focuses on preservation in the face of the containment and privatization of the land, and the growth of characterless commercial strips of suburbanization."