Michal Safdie: Vapor Trails July 16, 2010

Vapor trails are physical phenomena. At certain altitudes, jet exhaust from the plane's engine condenses and makes a line of visible H20 in the sky. The atmospheric conditions play with this condensation to create an infinite variety of patterns. Each vapor trail also represents an episode of human activity and the hundreds of passengers and goods traveling the sky every day. These vapor trails are a symbol of the globalized world - a shrinking, borderless planet where we are continually traveling the shortest routes and defying geography. Ronnen Safdie observes the extraordinary and unpredictable beauty of these patterns, where winds, temperature, and atmospheric conditions act upon a vapor emission and create wiggles, arches, fractal patterns or simply merge into the clouds and disappear to nothingness.