Olivo Barbieri's Aerial Photography: Seven Cities Like You've Never Seen Them

Everyone is familiar with the toy-like character the world assumes when looked at from a plane window. For the past ten years, the Italian photographer Olivo Barbieri has embellished this effect in his aerial photographs of major world cities. Shot from a helicopter, Barbieri originally experimented with tilt-shift photography to create images of cities as though they were in miniature—or, as he described it, "the city as an avatar of itself." Later, he used digital effects to play with his pictures' colors. The full range of images is on display in a new book from Aperture, Site Specific.