Just look at the pictures below. Now admit, what was the first thing that came to your mind? I believe that the answer was something like “no way these images are for real, they must be some sort of scaled models”. I’m sorry to inform you that you were wrong. Actualy it’s the other way arround. It’s hard to convince people that Olivo Barbieri’s aerial photographs are for real. They look uncannily like hyperdetailed models, with absent imperfections of reality. Streets are strangely clean, trees look plastic, and odd distortions of scale create the opposite effect of what we expect from aerial photography: a complete overview, like military surveillance.
Olivio began the “Site Specific project” in Rome, before moving on to Amman, Jordan; Las Vegas; Los Angeles; and Shanghai, China. He achieves the distinctive look by photographing from a helicopter using a tilt-shift lens; a method that allows to choose what he really liked in focus.
