Georg Gerster

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America's farmlands captured in aerial photographs

"In George Gerster's photographs, we're lying on our backs in the clouds, looking down at the land, a racially different view from the tractor seat or the Interstate. In these pictures, we're already floating. On our backs, in the clouds, we see constellations of rock, mythical topography, ancient shores, some shapes chosen and made by us, others prvidential, and the fragile shapes of farms, so earnest, naked, so eloquent of the hopes and labors of men and women. We look down to bless them." _ Garrison Keillor

Swissair was perhaps the most prestigious European airline at a time when flying was still a matter of quality. Matching the company’s standards of exclusivity, cosmopolitan spirit, and taste, their poster campaign became a legend in itself. Georg Gerster, award-winning Swiss pioneer of aerial photography, spent two decades shooting Swissair’s advertising posters that today, with the airline now defunct, are pricy collectors’ items. A unique fusion of Land Art, Minimalism, and photography, Gerster’s bird’s-eye view pictures display a travel romanticism devoid of the usual tourist kitsch. Joseph Beuys once said, "whether advertising is art depends on what it advertises." Promoting the beauty of our planet in pictures of a "timeless zeitgeist," there’s no doubt that Georg Gerster’s Swissair posters are unique pieces of art. This book for the first time presents the entire collection of Gerster’s breathtaking 1975 to 1995 Swissair posters.

Paradise Lost by Gerster, Georg. Published by Phaidon Press Inc.,2008, Hardcover

In 1976 and 1978, aerial photographer Georg Gerster had the rare opportunity to record the landscape of Iran on over 100 flights and 300 flying hours. This unique photographic project resulted in a near-complete documentation of the major archaeological sites and important landscapes in the region.The book includes spectacular images of ancient citadels, desert ruins, and rice fields spreading like a vast patchwork quilt in a river delta. There are many unexpected sights, such as the bird's-eye view of a crowded ski resort in the Elburz Mountains, within easy reach of Tehran. Iran's densely packed cities, such as Bushehr, located on the Persian Gulf, are elegantly captured by Gerster. They appear so very different from Western European or North American cities of the same period; the complex, interlocking flat-roofed buildings are both timeless and timely, with architecture that has stood unchanged for thousands of years, along with brightly-colored 1970s cars parked in the colonnaded courtyards. Even the Iranian landscape contains on closer inspection, the elaborate patterns made in fields with tractors and ploughs turn out to have more to do with politics than agriculture or land art. A law at the time Gerster was photographing allowed people to claim unused land by planting crops on it, and this type of ''agridoodle'' was apparently enough to support such a claim.Persia is the ancient name of the region we now know as Iran. We still reference the country's long and rich cultural heritage when we speak of Persian carpets and Persian miniatures, of Persian language, history, and literature. In her introduction to this book, Iranian-born writer Maryam Sachs lists some words borrowed from the Persian language by English speakers, including azure , bazaar , gazelle , magic , musk , tapestry , scarlet , narcissus , and paradise . These words offer insight into the country's landscape, inhabitants, and traditions - influences that have indirectly shaped the photos in the book. Paradise Lost vividly brings to life a place, time, and culture that few people outside of Iran were able to witness.

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