London Independent Photography Janet Hall Memorial Lecture 2026

“The aerial, with all the upheavals it engendered and conquests it permitted, is central to the modern imagination…” – Mark Dorrian and Frederic Pousin from Seeing From Above: The Aerial View in Visual Culture

David Birkin, an artist and Senior Lecturer in Photography at University of the Arts London will examine how aerial photography has transformed perception, knowledge, and power, from early surveillance technologies to modern scopic regimes. His lecture draws on his artistic practice, doctoral research at Goldsmiths’ Centre for Research Architecture, and archival work at the Imperial War Museum and Cambridge University’s aerial photography collection. By comparing Renaissance linear perspective with the aerial perspective, he explores the perceptual shifts linking historical visuality to militarised modernity and how these frameworks shape both vision and action.

Tickets £10.00