David Maisel: View from the Precipice

Known for his aerial photographs chronicling the complex relationships between natural systems and human intervention, David Maisel’s images often initially appear abstract and painterly, offering detailed but open-ended visual information that operates as both documentary and metaphor. Their strange beauty has been referred to as “the apocalyptic sublime." 

View from the Precipice, a retrospective monograph spanning Maisel's entire career, begins with a comprehensive index of his projects from 1983 to 2026 and includes both extensive information about each body of work and insights into their development in the artist's own words. This chronology is followed by a lyrically sequenced plate section that draws formal and conceptual connections across bodies of work, decades of time, and photography and painting—the two mediums in which Maisel most commonly works. In addition to writing by the artist, View from the Precipice also includes newly commissioned essays by Alexander Nemerov and Geoff Manaugh alongside reproductions of earlier writing on Maisel’s work by Terry Toedtemeier and Robert A. Sobieszek. A transcribed conversation between Maisel and author Samantha Harvey focuses on, among other things, the visual and psychological perspective afforded by the aerial vantage point.