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News & Media Portfolios: Vincent Laforet 'AIR'

Portfolios: Vincent Laforet 'AIR'

Photographers see something in the images they capture, creations both manmade and natural.

February 5, 2016
  • Vincent Laforet (center) and crew “There are many thoughts that go through my mind as I fly over each city. On the first level I am discovering the city visually, reacting to patterns, lines, and geometry, and working out flight plans, nearby airport traffic, and no-go zones—and translating all this to the pilots in terms that will allow them to help me make an image. I also have to call out lenses a minute or so ahead so that Mike can prepare the cameras and gyros behind me.” Photography: Vincent Laforet
  • “There is a lot of green fluorescent lighting in L.A., making the nighttime aerial shots a visual feast. The variance of the color of the lights is amazing. You can make out entire neighborhoods, richer and poorer, based on the color of the lights. The more affluent ones have brighter daylight (blue balanced) LED lights, whereas the older, less-modern sections are still bathed in the orange glow of sodium vapor lighting. And no study of this metropolis would be complete without a careful study of what defines it, and what sends the fear of God into most visitors and even life timers: the freeways and traffic.” Los Angeles, 10,000 feet.
  • “Imagine leaning out of an open door of a helicopter 7,500 feet over New York City on a very dark and chilly night, and seeing this. It is exhilarating and terrifying all at once. Let’s just start off by saying this was the scariest helicopter photo mission of my career. And the most beautiful. One veteran pilot that we often fly with refused to go up to the altitude we were at. He said helicopters are not meant to live in that realm, which I kind of agree with following this flight.” New York City, 7,500 feet
  • “First, there is no semblance of a grid in London or of an organized geometry that you find in most modern cities and in many older cities such as Barcelona and Paris. The streets can best be described as chaotic. But there is a very special beauty within the mysterious curves of London’s streets, especially so at night. “We were (unusually) politely asked by air traffic control how long we planned on flying around that area. There was no suggestion of asking us to move, but the high level of politeness sent an even stronger message. This is a great example of the class and gracious use of language that the British have long mastered. It’s also an example of how speaking calmly is more effective than threats or screaming. Less is more. We immediately found another area of interest.” London, 6,000 feet
  • “The one odd remark that I have to share is that I find that New York City can feel truly oppressive from the ground, especially as the skyscrapers tower over you—one can feel like an ant. But from the air the city feels perfectly balanced to me. When I’m on the ground in San Francisco I feel incredibly mellow and at peace. But from the air, I have to admit it feels oddly a bit too crowded and just a bit too jam-packed to me. San Francisco, 7,200 feet
  • Sydney, 5,000 feet
  • Vincent Laforet (center) and crew “There are many thoughts that go through my mind as I fly over each city. On the first level I am discovering the city visually, reacting to patterns, lines, and geometry, and working out flight plans, nearby airport traffic, and no-go zones—and translating all this to the pilots in terms that will allow them to help me make an image. I also have to call out lenses a minute or so ahead so that Mike can prepare the cameras and gyros behind me.” Photography: Vincent Laforet
  • “There is a lot of green fluorescent lighting in L.A., making the nighttime aerial shots a visual feast. The variance of the color of the lights is amazing. You can make out entire neighborhoods, richer and poorer, based on the color of the lights. The more affluent ones have brighter daylight (blue balanced) LED lights, whereas the older, less-modern sections are still bathed in the orange glow of sodium vapor lighting. And no study of this metropolis would be complete without a careful study of what defines it, and what sends the fear of God into most visitors and even life timers: the freeways and traffic.” Los Angeles, 10,000 feet.
  • “Imagine leaning out of an open door of a helicopter 7,500 feet over New York City on a very dark and chilly night, and seeing this. It is exhilarating and terrifying all at once. Let’s just start off by saying this was the scariest helicopter photo mission of my career. And the most beautiful. One veteran pilot that we often fly with refused to go up to the altitude we were at. He said helicopters are not meant to live in that realm, which I kind of agree with following this flight.” New York City, 7,500 feet
  • “First, there is no semblance of a grid in London or of an organized geometry that you find in most modern cities and in many older cities such as Barcelona and Paris. The streets can best be described as chaotic. But there is a very special beauty within the mysterious curves of London’s streets, especially so at night. “We were (unusually) politely asked by air traffic control how long we planned on flying around that area. There was no suggestion of asking us to move, but the high level of politeness sent an even stronger message. This is a great example of the class and gracious use of language that the British have long mastered. It’s also an example of how speaking calmly is more effective than threats or screaming. Less is more. We immediately found another area of interest.” London, 6,000 feet
  • “The one odd remark that I have to share is that I find that New York City can feel truly oppressive from the ground, especially as the skyscrapers tower over you—one can feel like an ant. But from the air the city feels perfectly balanced to me. When I’m on the ground in San Francisco I feel incredibly mellow and at peace. But from the air, I have to admit it feels oddly a bit too crowded and just a bit too jam-packed to me. San Francisco, 7,200 feet
  • Sydney, 5,000 feet

With his recently released photography book AIR, Pulitzer-prize-winning photographer Vincent Laforet takes the visual art to great extremes—he photographs the world’s cities from a helicopter 5,000 to 12,000 feet in the air. On assignment for Men’s Journal, he proposed shooting New York City from an unusually high altitude to “capture the lines that are formed by the streets at night.” From there, the idea for his book was born. Released in November 2015, AIR features photographs from 10 cities around the world. Shot from a helicopter—an Airbus Helicopter AS350 in the United States and an AS355 in Europe—the images show the street grid systems in place in many cities and the chaotic no-grid systems in others. A tilt-shift lens alters the perspective of some images and achieves a distinctive “diorama effect.” New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Berlin, London, Miami, San Francisco, Barcelona, and Sydney, composed of vastly different color patterns and grids, are captured through his lens, each landscape subtly revealing each city’s own architectural and socioeconomic history.

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