Roxanne and I have just finished indexing all of Frank’s Mount St. Helens finished prints (for his archive, which we are building), and this has left me – I think I can confidently speak for both of us and say us – with a great deal of affection for these images.
14 3/8 x 17 3/4 inches
Gelatin silver print; printed 1984
To say nothing of Mr. Gohlke’s exquisite printing, the images satisfy not only the dispassionate observer’s intellectual curiosity about such an exotic event and it’s aftermath, but also deliver a powerful emotive experience – of seeing the earth torn asunder in a way that can only be compared to the devastation of a nuclear bomb.
Over the course of Frank’s work on this series of images (1982 – 1990) the photographs show the gradual return of life to the wasteland, and the strangely ant like incursions of human activity into the blast zone; these were propelled by reclamation of timber, scientific and civil projects, and of not surprisingly – tourism.
We are both pining for the book:
