Christian Nolle

Point of Approach

Point of Approach

2007

There is something intrinsically fascinating about lifting your head or looking out the window and spotting an aircraft, and wondering where it is coming from or how many people are onboard. Point of Approach captures this wonderment by combining a photographic 'glimpse' of flying metal with as much publicly available information about each aircraft, as photographed through the window of a South-London apartment on one November day in 2006.

The photographs were split into a four volume book, each covering a 6 hour window: Volume 1 (00:00-06:00), Volume 2 (06:00-12:00), Volume 3 (12:00-18:00) and Volume 4 (18:00-00:00).

Each aircraft photographed was given its own double spread. One page shows the photo, the other page a scale drawing of the aircraft model (including occupancy), airline livery, and corresponding data drawn from publicly available data.

This juxtaposition between the abstract photo of the small plane in the sky against the rawness of the cold hard facts. A single edition was produced, covering over 1200 pages.