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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
