Abstract

This article argues that there is a relationship between aerial views and the representation of catastrophe prior to the arrival of military aerial photography in the aerodynamic era. First, the article briefly reviews utopian literature that, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, fantasized about the possibility of flying and warned of the destructive potential that vision from the air holds. It emphasizes that the conquest of the sky that began with the aerostatic balloon was represented with a sombre vision of a globe-eye as a warning of the coming danger. It also describes a series of representations of destruction, accomplished or in process, in ancient documents that used the aerial view and anticipated the photographs from planes that recorded the devastation of the wars of the twentieth century. This article argues, in short, that visual dominion from above turns the aerial view into a privileged position from which to represent the destruction of architecture and cities.