Product Description

Yann-Arthus Bertrand's photographic daybook features over 200 completely new photographs. Each image is accompanied on its facing page by a thoughtful and thorough explanatory text. The images reach across the continents, from the icebergs of Antarctica to the cotton fields of India to the olive plantations of Spain. All 12 chapters of the book open with a thoughtful introduction by one of several noted authors who address a wide variety of subjects critical to the present and future health of our planet: agriculture, biodiversity, sustainable development, energy, forests, fresh water, seas, global warming. The book thus offers us a new perspective on our spectacular but fragile environment.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #103181 in Books
• Published on: 2003-10-27
• Original language: French
• Binding: Hardcover
• 792 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
French photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand can be forgiven for looking down on the world when his latest global survey, The Earth from the Air, 365 Days bears such bold witness to the variety of our lives and our planet. More compact than the original The Earth from the Air, but somehow no less heavy, Arthus-Bertrand's glossy portrait-diary of privileged panoramas formalises the concept of looking at a single piece of art each day by arranging yet another stunning array of bird's-eye glimpses of the lives we lead, and the multitude we don't and never will. His now-recognisable preferences are much in evidence, such as a person or animal to give scale or reference to a shot (the relationship between man and beast greatly informs his more traditional portrait work, such as Dogs and Cats, local markets, primitive enclosures and dwellings, seaweed, water as transport, life-sustainer, destroyer and habitat and an irresistible attraction to the flamingo's brilliant hue. This time, even greater emphasis is placed on verbal context for each image, with a predominantly social commentary which acts as a moral tax on the visual delights. Oceans are overfished, rainforests destroyed, but Nature can play as malevolent a role, through hurricanes, or volcanoes, which feature prominently both as beautiful perils or as forces of geological shape. Indeed, perhaps the most beautiful photographs reveal tortured, sinewy geological formation, showing how much our world is formed by the fragile strength of its own internal forces and resources as much as humankind deforms it. Images stick in the mind: mangrove clearings in New Caledonia in the shape of a heart; stilt houses on the Orinoco Delta in Venezuela--literally Little Venice; an abandoned town near Chernobyl. Some exist aesthetically, some metaphorically, while others provoke, but almost without exception, they draw in the browser to contemplative delight. Textured works of art, daily balm for the vertiginous, The Earth from the Air, 365 Days is manna from heaven, and sure beats the Pirelli calendar --David Vincent

Customer Reviews

It�s above the rest
This book is fabulous. I have it lying around in the living room and just look at a few of the pictures at a time - this way it takes a while to read and every picture can be savoured. There is a picture for every day of the year and a couple of paragraphs about each picture that gives some background to the picture and ties it into the theme of the book - Ecology. The beginning of each month has a short essay by a scientist or similar subject matter expert about a particular ecological subject. I personally have not been reading them very closely!

The pictures are obviously why people buy this book and they certainly impress - they range from the famous (Venice) to eye-opening (The Hiroshima memorial building) to the whimsical (tyre tracks on an airport runway)! Every picture is wonderful and even if one does not appeal there are 365 other pictures to drink in. A nice feature is that the Lat/Long of each picture is shown so the very adventurous can go and see the locations for themselves!

All in all, a brilliant book to leave lying around and to sample whenever you have a spare five minutes. Drink in the wonderful pictures and then fantasise about visiting the locations in person. Brilliant.

The Medium is the Message
Almost pointless to review this book of lavish photographs on a site where you can't see the images, but take this one on trust: this is the most beautiful book in the world, ever. The photographs, one for each day of the (leap) year, are stunning aerial shots of the most striking features of every country in the world. It outscores its sister volume, The Universe: 365 Days, in sheer variety, believe it or not. Leave it open on your table, turn a page every day and you have a year's worth of wonder and fascination. Yesterday I had ice floes in northern Canada, near the Arctic Circle - just to the corner of the page, in the middle of one of the great white slabs, is a tiny speck than turns out to be a person. Today it's a village of subsistence living in the Sahara desert, near Timbuktu, where the only thing that makes the crops grow is the manure from the animals they feed with the crops...

Best of all, it's not just showy natural phenomena that catch the cameraman's eye - a lattice of working-class housing in Belfast or the scarred and crazed surface of a highway in Kentucky carry just as much interest. The only low point is the occasionally sanctimonious tone of the accompanying text, which invariably switches halfway through each description from telling you what you're seeing to a jeremiad against human beings and how we're wrecking everything. I could have done with more detailed explanations of the images. But you don't have to read the words: just look.

The book has a big wow! factor and is a definate must have..
'Earth from the air - 365 days' is a compact compilation of some of the most beautiful aerial photographs ever. Beginning with its appearance, I find the book aesthetically captivating, both in its size and content. Although considerably smaller than Bertrand's former large-scale 'The Earth from the Air', I find this daybook version allows for more efficient presentation and viewing of Bertrand's beautifully photographed images. The only drawback of the book's smaller size may mean for some viewers, the images viewed are a tad too small to be fully appreciated. Yet I find, for a surprisingly small book, its compactness is completely adequate for viewing some of the most amazing collection of world landscapes and environments. The book has an amazing great big wow! factor. And if I had to sum up in one word, it would be impossible to describe a book that I find incredibly irresistible, compelling, amazing, stunning, gorgeous....