As an undergraduate in 1983, I was transitioning from studying for a degree in architecture to one in the fine arts, and was working closely with my photography professor, Emmet Gowin. Gowin generously invited me to accompany him on a photographic expedition to the volcano Mount St. Helens, which had erupted several years earlier.
Working at Mount St. Helens was a profound experience. Witnessing the radical transformation of the land on such a massive, incomprehensible scale affected me deeply and set the course for much of my future work. I was captivated not only by the natural disaster of the eruption (which released energy equivalent to 27,000 times the atomic blast over Hiroshima) but also by the cataclysmic energy with which the logging industry was clear-cutting the area and transforming the environment. The scale and force of this human intervention, this systematic industrialization of the land, was especially compelling when viewed from the air. Working from an aerial perspective and grappling with what I came to think of as the apocalyptic sublime, continues to enthrall me, even decades after this early experience.
The intervening years allow me to see and to appreciate these pictures with greater clarity. The pictures are both desolate and delicate. They show a young artist at work, threshing through ideas, experimenting with new techniques, and wrestling with the cartographic powers of the photographic medium and the traditions of landscape art.