TUCSON, Ariz. — There are numerous pictures of the world's largest aircraft graveyard in Tucson from the ground. Funny enough, there aren't too many pictures of the retired military planes taken from the air.
German aerial photographer Bernhard Lang sought to change that.
The graveyard, known colloquially as the "Boneyard" and officially as the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group (309 AMARG), is located in the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base outside of Tucson. The facility is known for its historically large collection of 3,150 aircraft, 5,900 engines and 340,000 pieces of aircraft production tooling.
It was this notoriety that drew Lang to photograph the Boneyard from a new perspective.
"I've seen photos of it, but from the ground," Lang said. "These old, historic, broken planes were in rows and satellite imagery showed that this would look really interesting from above."
So, Lang took to the skies to shoot planes that no longer fly.
See some of the images from the piece here:
Tucson's internationally-known 'Boneyard' captured from bird's eye view
Prints of the project can be purchased on Lang's website and more photos can be seen on his Instagram.
The photos, originally taken in early March, carried a much different tone for Lang than his previous projects due to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.
Even though he was flying over a facility that partly repurposes military aircraft, it felt physically and emotionally further from the conflict than he does at home.
"[Munich] is quite close to the conflict compared to the U.S.," Lang said. "We have a lot of refugees getting to Germany and other European countries. This topic is quite current, I think."
This isn't the first trip Lang has taken from his home in Munich to the U.S. Southwest.
The desert has captivated the photographer and has been the inspiration behind previous pieces, including "Solar Farm" shot in the skies outside of Las Vegas and "Mojave Desert" shot in southeastern California.
"In the western part of the U.S., there's a lot of interesting places, patterns and structures to shoot," Lang said. "I live in a green area with a lot of plants and forests. For me, it's especially interesting to see these structures of the desert."
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