The Face of the Earth as Seen from the Air A Study in the Application of Airplane Photography to Geography — Text and Context

A New Angle on Familiar Scenes

Lee begins by applying the aerial perspective to well-known landmarks. The frontispiece shows the National Capitol in Washington, D.C., taken “obliquely downward” from above the National Botanical Garden. The caption notes the “radiating avenues” and the character of the surrounding district, including apartment houses and tree-lined streets. This is not mere description; Lee uses the image to illustrate how an oblique view reveals urban layout patterns invisible from the ground. Similarly, photographs of West Point and Annapolis (Figures 3 and 4) are presented as evidence that military academies, with their orderly grounds, are especially legible from the air. The language here is observational, not lyrical—Lee points out “the fairly regular layout of streets” in a Michigan village (Figure 39) as a “prototype of the American village.” The pace is steady, each example reinforcing the idea that the airplane camera can capture both the grand and the mundane with equal clarity.

From Architecture to Landforms

In the chapter on architecture and engineering, Lee shifts to human-made structures: Monument Avenue in Richmond, the Naval Observatory, shipyards at Newport News, and the New York Connecting Railroad Bridge. The photographs are chosen to demonstrate scale and context—a bridge seen from above reveals its relationship to the surrounding waterways. The narrative then moves to natural features, such as marshes and coastal mud flats, where the aerial view exposes drainage patterns and submerged landforms. Lee’s prose becomes more analytical: he describes “the mottled appearance of the land” in glacial regions and notes that “the difficulty is overcome in large measure by the use of aircraft” when photographing mountains. The pace quickens as he presents multiple examples, but the tone remains that of a field report. One striking passage recounts an experiment in June 1920, when the U.S. Air Service photographed a 220-square-mile area in seven hours, producing a map that engineers used for contouring. Lee calls the experiment “highly favorable,” a restrained endorsement that underscores his scientific caution.

Mapping and the Promise of Aerial Photography

The final chapters focus on the practical application of aerial photography to cartography. Lee explains how vertical photographs can be matched together to create mosaics, and how features like roads, streams, and forests are transferred to plane-table sheets. He includes a comparison of a photograph of Schoolcraft, Michigan (Figure 39) with a topographic map (Figure 40), showing the correspondence between the two. The language is technical: “scale, about 1:14,000” and “the checkerboard pattern being emphasized by the section-line roads.” Lee also discusses the challenges—such as the need for “automatic register” in mapping cameras (Figure 2)—and the advantages, like the ability to photograph volcanic craters from above. The pace is deliberate, with each step in the mapping process described in detail. Lee’s voice remains that of a geographer advocating for a new method, but he never overstates his case. The book ends not with a grand conclusion, but with an index and list of illustrations, reinforcing its nature as a practical manual.

Lee’s study is best approached as a period document in the history of geographic methodology. Readers interested in the evolution of remote sensing will find its detailed captions and systematic organization valuable. The book assumes some familiarity with geographic terms, but its core argument—that the airplane camera reveals patterns invisible from the ground—is accessible. Pay attention to the captions, which often contain more analysis than the main text. The photographs themselves, reproduced as halftones, are the heart of the work.

That strange 1922 book about aerial photography stayed with me—how a new vantage point can make familiar ground feel almost foreign. It reminded me of another quiet obsession, this one about ancient buildings and the questions we ask of them. There’s a particular tenderness in Problems in Periclean Buildings — A Reader’s Guide, like looking at stones with fresh eyes, and I keep circling back to both.