Banking at 4000 Feet 1917

Curator: This image, titled "Banking at 4000 Feet," is by Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson. Editor: It’s immediately dizzying; the tilted perspective makes my stomach drop! What a brave new world the airplane offered. Curator: The image pulls us into the cockpit. We have the wing bisecting the composition. Look at the city below, rendered in such precise detail. Editor: The lithographic technique is remarkable here. It emphasizes the contrast between the mechanical precision of the aircraft and the more organic, less controlled shapes of the clouds and the landscape. Curator: Precisely. Nevinson wants us to consider man's relationship to the sky, using the airplane as a symbol of modernity and perhaps even power. Editor: I find myself wondering about the labor involved in producing a print like this. The process is so integral to its message of technological advancement. Curator: Indeed, it’s hard to look at this image and not think about the complex relationship between progress and destruction. Editor: Absolutely, and examining the methods of its creation adds another layer to those tensions.