For 20 years, George Steinmetz, has taken aerial pictures from a motorized paraglider flying above some of the most stunning landscapes in Africa.
George Steinmetz | November 2008 issue
Photographer George Steinmetz has seen it all, in ways most people could never imagine. For some 20 years, the American-born artist has taken aerial pictures from a motorized paraglider flying between 100 and 14,450 feet (30 and 4,400 meters) above some of the most stunning landscapes in Africa. His new book African Air, to be published in November by Harry N. Abrams, chronicles his journey across this amazing continent.
Elephants grazing in Lake Amboseli, Amboseli National Park, Kenya: The green lake grasses are bisected by a network of elephant trails. The elephants migrate from the dry surrounding plains almost daily in the dry season to drink and graze. A worldwide ban on the ivory trade has allowed Kenya’s elephant population to rebound.
Fishing village outside Nouakchott, Mauritania: Pastoral nomads made up more than 90 percent of the population of Mauritania at the time of independence in 1960. After a severe drought, some 90 percent of Mauritania’s population moved to the capital, Nouakchott. Mauritania’s Atlantic coast has one of the world’s richest fisheries, and desert nomads have turned to the sea to survive.
Zebra herd in NamibRand Nature Reserve, Namibia.
Salt-loving algae give a red color to the hypersaline waters of Lake Natron in the Great Rift Valley on the border between Tanzania and Kenya.
Pinnacles of sandstone rise through the orange dunes of the Karnasai Valley, a few kilometers from Chad’s border with Libya.
Salt caravans pass each other on the enormous plain of the Ténéré Desert.
