VERTIKALE SICHT

9 A photographer does not depict realities without intent. He adjusts the optics of his camera, he positions it, and then he uses his eyes and his knowledge to determine when the auspicious moment has come. He then processes the picture in a laboratory or on a computer and finally he puts the photographs together as a pictorial narrative. Andreas Busslinger investigates in this way beauty and character with his bird’s-eye view pictures. He documents with curiosity the formal variations of the untouched, used and no-longer-used parts of Switzerland. He examines and classifies brownfield sites on the Central Plateau, congested roads in agglomerations, forests in the foothills of the Alps, or glacial lakes with their eternal snow. He is interested in differences and uniformities. His advantage and his ability as a storyteller with photographs is that he is able to visualize an image in ways that we non-fliers without cameras can never see or even imagine. And his curiosity and joy about the variety of forms – the shapes, fi- gures, progressions, and proportions have something comforting about them. Even the straightaways, curves, and circles of the big highway intersections have an aesthetic power that eludes us whenever we are sitting in a traffic jam or as hikers are annoyed by how careless our mobile society is. The journey through time of Swisstopo, the memory in my head, and Andreas Busslin- ger’s pictures in the book on the table – all of these changes in the landscape since I first flew over it in Ueli Bärfuss’s helicopter are breathtaking. I can’t help but be drawn to the formal fascination that the changes, as seen from above, have caused. The in- stallations for comfortable life and wealth in the Central Plateau and the faults caused by geological, climatic, and topographical changes in the mountains are transformed in the photographs into an image of long duration, if not eternity. The installations for production, mobility, living, and leisure all come from a time when climate change and its consequences were dismissed as rumors. And there are no signs in the pictures that society and the country have recognized the turning point and are beginning to change tack. The power and vehemence with which the landscape has been developed and set in stone for a lifestyle that is neither climate friendly nor suitable for the future leaves me at a loss. As Ueli Bärfuss’s copilot in the sixties, I was enchanted by the beauty be- low me. As Andreas Busslinger’s copilot, I’m melancholy. The at first sight stable, pro- tected, and rich landscapes only seem to hold their sway over nature – they are fragile, vulnerable, and endangered. Köbi Gantenbein was for many years the editor-in-chief and publisher of Hochparterre, the Swiss magazine for Architecture, Design, and Planning. He is today an independent landscape researcher and as such is often hiking, thankful for the expanded view from above. He lives and works in Fläsh, in the Grisons. Köbi Gantenbein