In the mid-1990s, French photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand embarked on an ambitious project: to create an image bank of aerial photographs of the earth. The remarkable book that resulted – The Earth from Above – was published in 1999 and translated into 24 languages. It is one of the world’s best selling illustrated books with more than six million copies in print. Unsurprisingly, it stimulated publishers around the world to consider similar books.