Designs on the Land: Exploring America from the Air

Alex MacLean has been photographing the history and evolution of the American landscape for over thirty years, from the great desert spaces to agricultural patterns and city grids. A trained architect who is closely involved in landscape heritage protection issues, MacLean has set out to create a series of pictures that show and explain the universal history of town and countryside. What he has to say may be invigorating or alarming, but it always raises the issues of the landscape's future. This new collection of exemplary photographs taken across the American landscape reflects MacLean's passionate interest in the effects of time, geological movements, shifting landscapes, redeployment, pollution, urban sprawl, and the overlapping of surfaces and activities. More than 400 photographs reveal in a unique way the physical splendour of America: both the beauty of the ongoing inhabiting of the land and the potential for modern planning to create spectacular environments.