Parcels

The German photographer Julian Faulhaber, known for his antiseptic views of new, squeaky-clean architectural structures, from gas stations to chic restaurants, shot a bird’s eye view of the Noordoostpolder tulip fields for The New York Times. He found himself in a helicopter trying to steady a medium-format camera against the bumpy air currents, in order to capture the mathematical precision and impersonal beauty of systematized nature. From high up, where details blur and patterns predominate, the full impact of what he was shooting became clear. “I kept thinking of Edward Burtynsky’s pictures of oil fields,” he remarks “and how different they look from the ground. You can see this landscape as clearly part of an economic system”, he adds. “The rows of coloured flowers look like lines of product on a warehouse rack.”