In Over, Alex MacLean looks down on North America from the air and turns the apparent order of its landscapes into a critical question. Published in French by Editions La Découverte in 2008, the book examines the environmental consequences of the “American Way of Life”: expansive urban development, intensive agriculture, enclosed residential communities, coastal construction, and the broader transformation of land by unrestrained consumption.

MacLean’s perspective is shaped by his training in urban planning and architecture. He works almost exclusively through sustained aerial observation, returning to the North American landscape year after year from his aircraft. The elevated viewpoint is not used simply to produce spectacular images. It makes patterns of settlement, land use, infrastructure, and degradation legible at a scale where individual decisions become visible as collective forces. His photographs occupy the space between landscape description, geographical inquiry, and ecological critique.

Although rooted in the United States, the book’s implications extend beyond its subject. The forms of development it records—suburban expansion, gated communities, extensive farming, and the occupation of coastlines—are presented as models whose influence can also be recognized in Europe. This gives Over a particular documentary force: it does not treat the American landscape as a distant curiosity, but as a preview and warning concerning shared environmental pressures.

For collectors, the book is significant as a sustained example of aerial photography used for scientific and demonstrative purposes rather than spectacle alone. Its 335 pages, French-language presentation, and substantial hardcover format support an extended reading of MacLean’s argument, allowing individual images to accumulate into a broader account of how societies shape—and damage—the terrain they inhabit.