Deserts
Sahara, Antarctica, Atacama, Uyuni — aerial footage of the world's deserts
"Valley of Death", "Valley Without Men", "Empty Quarter", "Land of Ruins", "Land of the Dead" — names given over the centuries to different desert regions of the world. Evocative of hostility and danger, these appellations bear witness to the profound impact these vast expanses have on the collective imagination, beliefs and cultures of humanity.
The word "desert", in its original sense, did not describe aridity or the absence of vegetation, but the uninhabited and uncultivated nature of a space. It was used to describe deep forests or steppes where hermit monks "went to the desert" to live in meditation — far from the world, but not necessarily far from water.
Seen from the air, the reality of the desert is something else entirely. Our collection brings together numerous sequences filmed in some of the most spectacular and least accessible deserts in the world — landscapes that only reveal their full scale from above, where geology, light and immensity take on their true dimension.
The Algerian Sahara — Tadrart and Djanet — It is perhaps in the southeast of Algeria, in the region of Djanet and the red Tadrart, that our desert collection is at its richest. The blazing dunes in shades of orange and red, the rock arches, the sandstone formations carved by millennia of wind and the prehistoric rock engravings compose a landscape of vertiginous beauty and antiquity.
The Libyan Desert — oasis and Lake Gaberoun — In the Libyan Desert, in the middle of nowhere, the oasis and Lake Gaberoun, near Sabha, appear from the air like a mirage made real — a patch of greenery and dark water at the heart of an ocean of sand, one of the most striking images in our desert catalogue.
Egypt — desert and pyramids — In the Cairo region, the desert is never far from the monuments. Our footage covers the pyramids of Dahshur, Abusir, Meidum and Giza in their true desert context — a mineral, ochre landscape that is a reminder that these colossal monuments were built on the edge of the void, at the boundary of the Nile's cultivable land.
The Uyuni Salt Flat — salt desert — In Bolivia, at 3,656 metres altitude, the Uyuni Salt Flat is the world's largest salt desert. Its 11,000 km² of white crust, its tree-like patterns formed by water seeping through the salt, and its perfect mirror of water during the rainy season make it one of the most photogenic desert landscapes on the planet — see our dedicated article on Bolivia.
Pakistan — yak caravan in the dunes of Skardu — In the upper Indus Valley, in Gilgit-Baltistan, our footage shows a yak caravan crossing sand dunes at the foot of the Karakoram peaks — a high-altitude desert at 2,500 metres, between sand, snow and rock, that one would not expect to find so far north.
Morocco — Merzouga and the Erg Chebbi — On the edge of the Moroccan Sahara, the dunes of Merzouga and the Erg Chebbi offer from the air a landscape of classic dunes with perfect ridges — filmed in raking light for maximum visual impact.
Antarctica — the world's largest desert — Technically, the largest desert on the planet is not the Sahara but Antarctica — classified as a desert by its absence of liquid precipitation. Our footage of this extreme continent covers glaciers, pack ice, the McMurdo Dry Valleys and the French-Italian Concordia research station, lost in the middle of the polar plateau at 3,233 metres altitude. A collection apart in our catalogue — see our dedicated article on Antarctica.
Aerial footage of deserts
