Jeffrey Milstein‘s photographs have just won a Graphis Gold Award for his Los Angeles Fire Aftermath photos, and a Graphis Silver Award for his recent Paris aerials.
Here is a selection from both series. About the Paris photographs Milstein writes :
Paris – In late October 2025, I was granted a rare privilege: authorization to fly over the heart of Paris for a low-altitude photographic mission. Due to the strict P-23 “No-Fly Zone” regulations, such permissions are historically elusive. Since Nadar took the first aerial photographs of Paris from a balloon in 1858, only a handful of photographers have been allowed to document the capital from this perspective.
This mission served as a vital follow-up to my 2019 flight for my Rizzoli book, Paris From the Air. While my previous work captured a city in shock—with Notre Dame obscured by tarps—this 2025 flight allowed me to document the cathedral’s rebirth and the city’s evolution.
On October 25, I took off in a twin-engine helicopter with an open door, I was allowed only an hour within the city ring under a soft, autumnal sky. The flight was so unusual it was written up in the newspapers. The clouds provided a pastel palette, lending a painterly quality to both my signature (straight-down) shots and my panoramic landscapes. Over two hours I captured a Paris that feels both intimate and monumental. My pilot was experienced and was quickly able to get me to my targets, but as time was limited, I had to make decisions and shoot quickly. I had two Fuji 100 MPXL cameras around my neck, and lenses from 32mm to 500mm. I shot 2000 images during a two-hour flight.
An intriguing aspect of this mission was the Prefecture of Police’s requirement to blur or pixelate certain sensitive government and military sites. Rather than a limitation, I view this “enforced redaction” as a compelling narrative element, highlighting the tension between the freedom of the lens and the security of the state.
Jeffrey Milstein
Woodstock, NY-based Jeffrey Milstein was born in the Bronx in 1944. He received a degree in architecture from UC Berkley in 1968, and practiced as an architect before turning to photography in 2000. Milstein earned his pilots license at 17, and his passion for flight led to his well known typology of aircraft photographed from below while landing. In 2007. The work was presented in a solo show at the Ulrich Museum of Art in 2008, in a year long solo show at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in 2012. In 2016 it was on display at the Brandts Museum in Odense, Denmark. In recent years Milstein has reversed the direction of the camera creating award winning unique aerial images of man-made landscapes that are iconic and emblematic of the modern world. These photographs have been recently shown in solo shows at Kopeikin Gallery, Bau-Xi Gallery, and Benrubi Gallery in 2017-2018. The National History Museum of Los Angeles County opened a permanent installation in 2017 which included a large scale reproduction of Milstein’s aerial photograph of Beverly Hills. His aerial photograph of Newark Airport is a cover image for the catalog accompanying the traveling FEP exhibition “Civilization, The Way We Live Now”. His photographs have been exhibited and collected throughout the United States and Europe, and are represented by Kopeikin Gallery in Los Angeles, Benrubi Gallery in NYC, Bau-Xi Gallery in Canada, and ARTITLEDcontemporary in Europe. His photographs have been published in New York Times, LA Times, The Guardian, Esquire, Fortune, Time, Harper’s, GQ, European Photography, American Photo, Eyemazing, Graphis, photomagazin, Die Ziet, Liberation, Wired, PDN, Esquire, Conde Naste Traveler, and featured on the CBS evening news with Scott Pelly. Abrams published Milstein’s aircraft work as a monograph in 2007, Monacelli published his extensive body of work from Cuba as a monograph in 2010, and Thames and Hudson published LA NY, a collection of aerial photographs of LA and NY in 2017. His work has been collected by museums including LACMA, the Smithsonian Museum, the George Eastman House, the Portland Museum of Art, and the Akron Art Museum.
