Maps used to be considered an essential language of the geographical science. Lately, vertical aerial photographs and orbital images have joined them. The first ones were highly used in geographical research within an academic-scientific context, currently complemented by orbital images. These two languages are generating a new way of looking at and conceiving space, whether it is close (passed by our bodies on a daily basis) or distant (experienced through orbital images, among other types of images). The different types of orbital images and vertical aerial photographs have been creating a certain visual memory of the reality of the geographical space in its several daily expressions. Therefore, I wonder in which context such images take on the status of being real or so similar to reality in a way that they seem to be, in fact, authentic or the geographical reality itself. What supposedly makes us believe in the images as a (re)presentation of reality? In this text, I discuss the reality status which orbital images and aerial photographs own in the context of academic geographical studies. At the end, I will point out to some examples of the reality status in vertical aerial photographs.
vertical aerial photographs; remote sensoring; geographical education; reality; language
