In this series, the curatorial team presents one work from the Meural art library we find essential. (See all installments.)

The allure of the aerial photograph is sometimes difficult to pinpoint. It inspires a tingle of pride in the sheer ambition of mankind’s imagination—for photographs such as this are manifest proof of our technological prowess. The history of aerial photography is, after all, a story of human innovation—of the first hot air balloons, precariously tethered to kites above the Parisian skyline, and reconnaissance planes held together with plywood sent to conduct daring missions over the Western Front; of spaceships propelled into the atmosphere at the speed of 18,000 miles per hour, and drones developed in secret military facilities but now available on the shelves of Target.

And yet, in contrast (and contradiction), the aerial photograph’s drastically different perspective seems to reveal man’s misplaced hubris. From the sky, as if a bird in flight, we catch an unusual glimpse of our immediate environment. Suddenly, we are but toy figures in a landscape radically reshaped for modernity, but indifferent to our individual concerns.

Take the frame higher and wider and we begin to truly discern the order and structure that underpins the natural world; branching fractals and strange symmetries that mysteriously unite diverse cities, regions, continents.

— Poppy Simpson, Head of Curation