The Playbook

MacLean, Alex S.

4.25

8 ratings by Goodreads

ISBN 10: 0500513236 ISBN 13: 9780500513231

Publisher: Thames & Hudson, 2006

For more than thirty years, aerial photographer Alex S. MacLean has portrayed the history and evolution of the American land, from great desert spaces to agricultural patterns to city grids. A trained architect who is closely involved in landscape heritage protection issues, MacLean has set out to create a series of pictures that record the universal history of town and countryside, and raise the issue of the landscape's future.

Here he turns his camera on the colorful, exhilarating patterns created by Americans at play, and the lasting marks they leave behind. From the beauty of perfectly symmetric sports stadiums to the spaghetti-like tangles of theme parks to picnickers on a stretch of splendid beach, he illuminates how we inhabit the land and the potential for modern planning to create spectacular environments. 80 color illustrations.

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About the Author:

Alex MacLean has a degree in architecture from Harvard University. In 1975, he founded Landslides, a company that specializes in aerial photography. He lives in Lincoln, Massachusetts.

From Booklist:

Journalist Susan Yelavich's and photographer MacLean's brief introductions to these aerial photographs of various kinds of playgrounds say stimulating things about the importance of play to humans, in particular. (Most intriguingly, MacLean notes that the capacity to play differentiates mammals, who have it, and reptiles, who don't.) Those piqued by their words should repair immediately to the great medieval historian Johan Huizinga's Homo Ludens (1938). Not, however, before joining the rest of us to gawk and ruminate over MacLean's shining color photos, taken from his Cessna, of roller-coasters, waterslides, game-playing fields, sunbathing beaches, swimming pools, cadets on a parade ground, children's playgrounds, parking facilities for various vehicles, surfers on a wave, waders in a wave pool, ice-fishing holes on a lake, and even a drive-in in the winter. What may occur to many, but neither Yelavich nor MacLean mentions, is the photos' frequent, uncanny resemblance to modern paintings of various styles: impressionist, constructivist, and all kinds of abstraction. Neat! Ray Olson
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