Alex MacLean Aerial Photography: 10 American Landscapes from Above

Alex MacLean has spent five decades photographing the United States from the cockpit of his own small plane. From a few hundred metres up, flower farms turn into striped fabric, lobster boats into a printed pattern and suburbs into a board game. These ten photographs, from California to Maine, show how much of the American landscape is designed by people.

Who is Alex MacLean?

Born in 1947, MacLean studied at Harvard College and earned a Master of Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design in 1973. While studying community planning he became fascinated by the view from the air, gained his commercial pilot's licence by 1975 and soon after founded Landslides Aerial Photography. He flies out of Bedford, Massachusetts, and keeps his studio in nearby Lincoln.

His aim is to show the history and evolution of land, "from vast agricultural patterns to city grids", and the way human decisions and natural processes change it. His Landslides portfolio is organised around themes such as agriculture, transportation, dwellings and recreation.

Books and awards

MacLean has published around ten books. They include Taking Measures Across the American Landscape (1996, with landscape architect James Corner), The Playbook (2006), OVER: The American Landscape at the Tipping Point (2008), Las Vegas | Venice (2010) and Up on the Roof (2012). He won the Corine International Book Prize in 2009 and has also received an American Institute of Architects award for architecture book publishing.

Farms and harbours: Lompoc, Tremont and Ohio

Lompoc, California. The Lompoc Valley in Santa Barbara County is famous for its commercial flower-seed fields, which bloom in long bands of colour in spring and summer. From the air, the access paths between the rows are what turn the colour into a pattern. MacLean's Flowers collection has more.

Tremont, Maine. Tremont lies on Mount Desert Island, home of Acadia National Park. Boats on moorings swing to face the wind and tide, so from above a harbour full of lobster boats lines up like a print on fabric.

North-central Ohio. Swathes of tomato fields show the curving tracks of farm machinery. More of this subject is in the Agriculture portfolio.

Leisure and movement: Orlando, Tucson, Oahu and Portsmouth

A crowded wave pool in Orlando, Florida, looks like an ant colony from above, while surfers at Sunset Beach on Oahu's North Shore, one of Hawaii's most famous big-wave spots, ride water that no designer controls.

The Tucson photograph shows aircraft parked in rows in the Arizona desert, where dry air and hard ground make long-term storage easy. In Portsmouth, Virginia, part of the Hampton Roads port area, stacks of shipping containers form a coloured mosaic that changes every time a ship comes in.

Pools, golf and suburbs: Cambridge, Las Vegas and Beaverton

A public pool in Cambridge, Massachusetts, shows families and strangers sharing the same small rectangle of water and deck. Near Las Vegas, a green golf course stands out against the desert like an oasis. In Beaverton, Oregon, a housing development of near-identical homes on curving streets looks like an oversized game of LIFE.

You do not need a plane to try MacLean's way of looking. A bridge, a hill or an upper-floor window will show how streets, fields and water fit together; then ask what makes that pattern useful to the people below.

For a contrasting aerial subject, see our Andre Ermolaev feature, where Icelandic river channels draw the patterns.

Related reading

• Cenote Angelita: The Underwater Layer Behind the River Illusion
• Haʻikū Stairs, Oʻahu: Photographs and Communications History

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