The Benefits of Flight-induced Relativism

Edward Burtynsky
"Silver Lake Operations #2, Lake Lefroy, Western Australia"
2007
Digital chromogenic print
Dimensions variable

"From the height of ten thousand feet, the earth appears to the human eye as it appears to the eye of the camera; that is to say, all history is reduced to the accidents of nature. This has the salutary effect of making historical evils, like national divisions and political hatreds, seem absurd.
...
If the effects of distance between the observer and the observed were mutual, so that as the objects on the ground shrank in size and lost their uniqueness, the observer in the airplane felt himself shrinking and becoming more and more generalized, we should either give up flying or create heaven on earth."
-W.H. Auden

For more thoughts on altitude granted relativism, read my post, "The Absurd Whole," a response to an exhibition of Michael Light's photographs.

Photo credit: Burtynsky photograph ripped from artnet