Spatial distance gives perceptual access to systemic harms we cannot directly see

Evidence

Distance, on the contrary, zooms out from ordinary phenomenal perception and banal experience, to levels only possible in the imagination and with advanced tech. We don’t—most of us—get to perceptually encounter the orbit of human degradation of the earth or capitalist extraction of resources; we don’t see from on high afar. Burtynsky’s large formats and sweeping perspectives tender us something more than ourselves, and something other than oneto-one correspondence. — Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late…, 332

Categorization

• SEED: Burtynsky’s aerial scales as a concrete example of deliberate mediation exposing systemic extraction — usable in her defense-of-mediation piece.
• XREF: connects to: Proximity and intimacy to a place can blind observers to its disturbance history — Tom Wessels, Forest Forensics: A Field Guide to…, 7