The twentieth century

By and large, this book is concerned with the permanence of landscape, but this chapter is concerned with its impermanence. In general, the photographs used in earlier chapters were taken recently, so recently that we are not concerned with precisely when they were taken, and show features which survive from the often distant past. However, it would be difficult to claim that such photographs are a significant source for the historian of the present century; in particular, most of the man-made artifacts of this period are all too visible at ground level, and their arrangement well-recorded in maps and plans. The photographs in this chapter therefore have a very different emphasis, on aerial photographs as historic artifacts in their own right, and as a record of landscapes no longer to be seen.