Military drones, we are told, have a powerful enough resolution to see the labels on the clothing of their victims. But a human rights organisation monitoring the consequences of a drone strike is only allowed access to satellite pictures at a much lower resolution.

It is such differences between images, between the before and after of a violent action, that lie at the heart of Eyal and Ines Weizman’s intriguing ebook essay for Strelka Press.

The text opens with the premise that: ‘History is increasingly presented as a series of catastrophes. The most common mode of this presentation is the before-and-after image − a juxtaposition of two photographs.’ These communicate not a slow process of transformation but of radical change − a singular action leading directly to a unique effect. The event that causes this change is itself missing from the pairs of images and is instead ‘captured by the transformation of space, thus calling for an architectural analysis’. 

An account follows that examines the before-and-after phenomenon from the birth of photography (where the long exposures necessary meant that people were usually absent) to the latest images from the Landsat 8 satellite, launched in 2013, which are never released into the public domain at resolutions that can show individuals.

The Weizmans seek to problematise the phenomenon − does the camera lie and what does the gap between the before and the after conceal? Environmental changes and upheavals caused by human agency are discussed − from the French Revolution of 1848 through the bombing of Dresden to the genocides and environmental degradation in Cambodia and Darfur; from the side-on shot, to the bird’s-eye view....Continue Reading

> via The Architectural Review