Airport Terminals

In 1938 an airfield was built at the northeastern-most end of America, the descent went slowly but incessantly through the Cold War. This is the story of how its inhabitants gradually moved away from the great world stage and had to reinvent themselves as well as their home town.

Berlin's Tempelhof Airport was opened in 1923 and, under Adolf Hitler, extended to become the world's largest airport which was finally closed in 2008. But even today Tempelhof Airport remains a place of arrivals and departures being used simultaneously as a refugee shelter and a leisure park for the inhabitants of Berlin. A historically unique moment for a portrait of this city within a city, but also of a European society in a state of emergency, caught between crisis and utopia.

Historical accounts of racial discrimination in transportation have focused until now on trains, buses, and streetcars and their respective depots, terminals, stops, and other public accommodations. It is essential to add airplanes and airports to this narrative, says Anke Ortlepp. Air travel stands at the center of the twentieth century’s transportation revolution, and airports embodied the rapidly mobilizing, increasingly prosperous, and cosmopolitan character of the postwar United States.

"Something hit us…the crew is dead…help us, please, please help us!" With these terrifying words, 22 of Hollywood's greatest stars find themselves aboard a pilotless jumbo jet headed on a collision course with destruction in the nerve chilling sequel to …