Paper for panel Practices of Aerial Revolution,
9th Biannual EAHN Conference, Aarhus, Denmark, 17-21 June 2026.
9th Biannual EAHN Conference, Aarhus, Denmark, 17-21 June 2026.
In December 1967, a Norwegian road engineer, Magne Brandshaug, employed at the Roads Branch in the Kenyan Ministry of Works, faced an unexpected career proposition: he was to spend six months at a factory in Switzerland that produced unique equipment for photogrammetry. This detour was intended to address an unexpected issue at the Kenyan Ministry of Works: having procured expensive, cutting-edge photogrammetric equipment through international aid networks, the Ministry couldn’t find specialists to operate it. NORAD, the Norwegian Agency for International Development, which paid for Brandshaug’s appointment in Kenya, generously agreed to finance the Swiss course. This, however, was not just an act of humanitarian goodwill: photogrammetry was one of the new ways to obtain reliable information about physical objects and their environment by recording, measuring and interpreting aerial photographic images. In other words, it was the latest technology to collect data and map the previously “unmapped” territories, a necessary step before Norwegian-sponsored projects of urban and rural development could take place. The resulting photomosaic images were analysed for agricultural and forestry potential, first by tech-savvy Norwegian regional planners Adersson & Skjånes, and later fed into mainframe computers for information processing.
Through a close reading of original archival documents of NORAD’s projects in East Africa, this paper explores how photogrammetry was mobilised as a tool of territorial conquest and resource mobilisation within the Western narratives of development. By tracing the many international and local actors and tools involved in aerial mapping of the seemingly “unknown” landscapes of East Africa, the study scrutinises the power dynamics established between the different fields of vision, technological regimes, and ecological knowledges. By doing so, it challenges the photogrammetry’s claims to an objective point of view, arguing that it was a site of knowledge production in itself, disconnected from the on-the-ground realities of remote geographies.