MUNICH.- Amerikahaus Munich is presenting two major bodies of work by American photographer Johnny Miller in Unequal Scenes & Salt Works, an exhibition that examines how social inequality, industrial activity and human intervention become visible when landscapes are viewed from above.

On view from October 16, 2026 through January 9, 2027, the exhibition brings together Miller's internationally recognized Unequal Scenes project with his more recent explorations of industrial salt landscapes. Presented in collaboration with Buchkunst Berlin, the show highlights the photographer's ability to move between documentary observation and near-abstraction while addressing some of the defining social and environmental questions of the present.

For Unequal Scenes, Miller uses drones to photograph cities and urban territories from directly overhead. From this elevated perspective, boundaries that may be difficult to perceive at street level become strikingly clear. Roads, walls, waterways and property lines divide neighborhoods with dramatically different levels of wealth, infrastructure and access to resources.

Photographed in countries including South Africa, Kenya, Brazil, Colombia, the Philippines and the United States, the images reveal how economic and social divisions become embedded in the physical structure of cities. Affluent developments may sit only meters away from informal settlements, while highways, fences or narrow strips of land become visible markers of separation.

Yet Miller's photographs are not only documentary records. Their precise compositions, patterns and geometries frequently resemble abstract works of art. That visual attraction creates a tension at the center of Unequal Scenes: the images can appear unexpectedly beautiful even as they expose profound disparities in the way people live.

The exhibition also features Miller's Salt Works series, in which the photographer turns his drone toward industrial salt-production landscapes in Namibia, Mexico and the San Francisco Bay Area.

Seen from the air, salt evaporation ponds become fields of intense red, green and blue arranged in geometric formations. The colors, created in part by microorganisms that change as salt concentrations increase, transform industrial landscapes into compositions that can resemble large-scale abstract paintings.

Behind their striking appearance, however, the photographs document environments shaped by the interaction of natural processes, technology and human intervention. Together with Unequal Scenes, the series demonstrates Miller's continuing interest in revealing structures that are often difficult to understand from ground level.

Across both projects, aerial photography becomes more than a visual device. Miller uses it to expose relationships between geography, power, economics and ecology, turning landscapes into evidence of the systems that shape contemporary life.

Miller is an American photographer, filmmaker, artist and drone journalist who works between South Africa and the United States and is expanding his activities to Berlin. He studied political science at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania and has developed a practice focused on the ways political, social and environmental forces leave visible traces on cities and landscapes.

His work has been exhibited and published internationally. An image from his practice appeared on the international cover of TIME magazine in 2019, while National Geographic has featured Unequal Scenes. Miller is also a Senior Fellow at Code for Africa, an Atlantic Fellow, a BMW Responsible Leader, a UN-Habitat Champion and a co-founder of africanDRONE.

Beginning in September 2026, Miller will spend a year working at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin.

The exhibition is accompanied by the publication Johnny Miller – Unequal Scenes, published by Buchkunst Berlin, which brings together a broad selection of photographs from the long-running project and expands on Miller's investigation of the spatial, political and social structures shaping contemporary cities.

Unequal Scenes & Salt Works opens at Amerikahaus Munich on October 16 at 7 p.m., with Johnny Miller and curators Ana Druga and Thomas Gust in attendance. Miller and the curators will also lead a special tour during Munich's Long Night of Museums on October 17, followed on October 18 by an exhibition tour and a lecture by Gust examining aerial photography and reconnaissance from an art-historical perspective.