Charles E. Rotkin (1916-2004)
Aerial Photographs
for Europe: An Aerial Close-Up
American: c. 1956-1958
Black and white photographs
Dimensions vary
$250 to $1,250 each

Other available works by Charles E. Rotkin

Aerial photographs from Europe: An Aerial Close-Up, a pioneering book of aerial photography published in 1958.  The book contained some 200 photos taken at low altitudes from helicopters and light planes, giving novel views of landmarks in Europe's major capitals and other important cities including London, Oxford, Edinburgh, Stockholm, Paris, Geneva, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Rome, Venice, Athens and Madrid.  Rotkin conceived of the idea as providing a fresh perspective on familiar places, based on his experiences taking such photos for the Standard Oil Company and other U.S. clients.  He also found that almost no aerial photographs of Europe were available to the general public.  Upon arriving there, he negotiated his way through a bureaucratic maze of wary, security-conscious European officials to obtain clearances to take pictures from the air, on at least one occasion abandoning the attempt to get official authorization and flying over in a plane rented in a neighboring country.  In the present day, when satellite photographs of almost anywhere can be downloaded for free on the Internet and local TV news routinely broadcasts aerial footage of rush-hour traffic, it is worth remembering how revelatory Rotkin's photos appeared in the 1950s.

Rotkin was a respected and prolific documentary photographer, widely published during the golden age of pictorial magazines, as well as in corporate publications.  The works that brought Rotkin the greatest renown, however, were his pioneering aerial photography collections, Europe: An Aerial Close-Up (1958) and The U.S.A.: An Aerial Close-Up (1962, 1968).  These books captured the popular imagination at the time, thrilling the public with novel perspectives of familiar places and the beauty of both the natural and the man-made environment.  Rotkin can be seen as one of the heirs to the 19th- and early 20th-century tradition of bird's-eye views of American towns drawn by itinerant artists in the pre-aviation era and often made into prints.  Of course, the earlier artists' work, though convincingly drawn and detailed, were typically imaginative projections based on their studies of the town from the ground. These became obsolete with the advent of the airplane and helicopter, which offered actual bird's-eye views, along with cameras that could take pictures at split-second shutter speeds. Rotkin was one of the early pioneers of the new medium and technique. His work remains significant as an early example of aerial photography with an artistic purpose, and also as historical documents of places that in many cases have significantly changed in the ensuing decades.

Read more biographical information here.

References:

Chad, Barry L. "Bridging the Urban Landscape. The Photographers: Roy E. Stryker."  Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh.  14 May 2003.  http://www.clpgh.org/exhibit/photog14.html (8 February 2006).

Reese, Kay and Leipzig, Mimi.  "An Interview with Charlie Rotkin."  1992.  Online at American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP). 7 March 2005.  http://www.asmp.org/60th/interview_charlie_rotkin.php (6 February 2006).

Rotkin, Charles E. Europe: An Aerial Close-Up.  Philadelphia and New York: J.P. Lippincott, 1958.

Rotkin, Charles E.  The U.S.A.: An Aerial Close-Up. New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1968.