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Mount St Helens in the pictures of Frank Gohlke
A quarter of a century after the devastating eruption that killed 57 people and covered thousands of hectares of land with ash, lava and lapilli in 1980, the St Helens volcano, 100 miles south of Seattle in Washington State, is at the centre of a photographic exhibition that reconstructs a decade of history and activity starting from that date.
The photographer Frank Goehlke returned five times to the slopes of the North American volcano between 1980 and 1991 to illustrate the story of what was unanimously considered a natural disaster of biblical proportions from earth to sky. Mount St Helens is just one of the numerous “human artefacts” immortalized by the Texan artist, whose snapshots fix the complex relationship between nature and the constructed environment.
The phenomenon commenced on 27 March 1980 when lapilli and ash were projected thousands of metres into the air. On 18 May, a flood of lava suddenly erupted on an incredibly wide front - almost 22 kilometres - at a speed never recorded before of 240 kilometres per hour. The ash reached a height of 185 metres and, with its incredible speed, the mass of lava surprised 57 people over a 520-square-kilometre area. E.S.
29.7.2005 - 26.9.2005 Mount St. Helens: Photographs by Frank Gohlke 11 West 53 Street, New York T +1-212-7089400 http://www.moma.org
