Aerial Observations on Airports

“Above the clouds, freedom must be boundless . . .” The photographer Tom Hegen became internationally known with his aerial photographs, which deal primarily with the human landscape. They succeed in making us aware of what humans do with the earth. How we shape and process it, and how we destroy it.
What happens now, when airports are in a state of emergency and suddenly have to shut down due to health precautions, as was the case during the coronavirus pandemic? Tom Hegen also took advantage of this historic moment for his own work and used helicopter flights to take unique aerial photographs of resting runways. Strictly structured compositions were created that show the largest German airports in geometric clarity. It is not humankind who intervenes in nature here, but rather nature that influences us.

TOM HEGEN (*1991) is a photographer and designer based in Munich. He has received several awards, most recently the Red Dot Design Award (2018) and the German Design Award (2019). His pictures are represented in German and European institutions, and are regularly published in magazines such as GEO, Die Zeit, and FAZ.