VERTIKALE SICHT

8 Samedan is a village in Upper Engadine where I grew up. The airport was ten minutes on foot from our apartment. I was often at the airport because Ueli Bärfuss was the- re, a helicopter pilot – the rescuer of fallen mountain climbers, the supplier of power plant building sites, the water cannon service for burning forests, and the delivery man for wood, macaroni, and milk for Swiss Alpine Club huts. One day in the late sixties, he said to me, «OK, boy, in God’s name, get in!» He buckled me into the seat next to his and put a Peltor headset over my ears. Then the blades of his helicopter began to rotate, and when the roar was loud enough, the transparent sphere on runners rose, leaving a fine plume behind. Swinging back and forth. And shortly we were up in the air with the birds. And Samedan became smaller and smaller – our house on the Bahn- hofstrasse – small; St Peter’s Church – tiny; the golf course – a green spot; the streets - like bits of string; and the train - the same size as my model railroad. The helicopter delivered and uploaded without landing at the Tschierva Hut. I was again amazed at how quickly the hut became small. We rhythmically swayed back and forth over old snow and ice, beneath us rocks and snow, the last grass and the cliffs as large mono- chrome patches of color that merged into one another. And soon the little strings on the ground became streams again, and we descended steeply onto the landing zone in front of the hangar, and my first flight was history, my first bird’s-eye view was in my memory, and the knowledge of the differences between above and below in my experience. Andreas Busslinger is also a flyer, but his profession is different from that of Ueli Bär- fuss. He doesn’t rescue any mountain climbers, nor does he provide their huts with bold flights. He doesn’t drop any water, and he doesn’t transport any lost cows through the air. He is a flier doing research and seeking beauty with a paraglider, a camera hanging from his neck, and when not in the air but on the ground, he is operating the camera of a drone remotely. And like Ueli Bärfuss once did, he spoke to me recently, «OK, old boy, get in!» His flight, however, started comfortably from the sofa, no noise, no swaying. There was a large-format book on the table with 177 photographs of Switzerland from above. On page after page, you passed over the land and into the mountains – like befo- re with Ueli Bärfuss but without the noise. A photographer is outside in the wind and the weather. He patiently waits for the right timing – the weather and the light must be right; his photographic instincts must tell him to press the shutter, and an image of the right moment comes out of the camera – now immortalized. Swisstopo has set up scenic maps that span the time periods of Swiss topography as a guide for reading Andreas Busslinger’s many auspicious mo- ments. The maps of 150 years are lined up, and by moving a button, we can see in the abstract images how the landscape of Switzerland has changed. By doing so we can anchor Busslinger’s images in the passage of time. We clearly see what we already know: two generations have changed the land more than all of their ancestors together since the Ice Age were able to. But the changes, scars, and destructions appear more and more idyllic as the distance of the camera’s viewpoint from the earth increases. Sewage treatment plants, roads, gravel pits, and railways become paintings by a Cubist artist. The at first glance dreary housing blocks on the outskirts of villages and towns, that architects and builders have used for ten years to break up and cover the land, look like mere embellishments of a gray monotony. The merciless vehemence that farmers have used to clear off the landscape, that, depending upon the season, looks like dif- ferent paintings by Concrete artists – colorful areas that merge into one another in the primary colors of agriculture: green, brown, and yellow. A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW OF SWITZERLAND