The flights were fantastic. I love flying because it offers us (when I say us I mean to address people of the first three preceding generations and my generation as well) a view that our ancestors perhaps only dreamed of. Photographer Emmet Gowin says, "The astonishing thing to me is that in spite of all we have done, the earth still offers back so much beauty, so much sustenance. So much of what we need is embodied in it."
Gowin started his aerial photography career when he was commissioned to document the aftermath of the eruption of Mount St. Helens back in 1980. This jumpstarted his career as an aerial photographer of "sites throughout the U.S. and around the world where human intervention has radically altered the appearance of the earth."
Since photography was invented back in 1839 and aeronautics aproximately in 1903, it has been roughly a century until we have been able to accurately depict views of human life and geography from an elevated perspective. All the strife, all the disaster, bones and blood, and bowels of human existence somehow become undefined from an airplane window. We are packed like cattle in airplanes but we are so relatively lucky to see this image of beautiful cruelty -- visions of an affected earth and modern civilization.
***Emmet Gowin, Old Hanford City Site & the Columbia River, Hanford Nuclear Reservation, near Richland, Washington, 1986***
"I believe that difficult images bring us all closer to a shared experience. A picture is like a prayer, an offering, and hopefully an opening through which to seek what we don't know."
--Emmet Gowin
Here are some pictures I took from the airplane. I just bought this new camera (mostly from the inspiration of my friend Dale Albanese) so please bear with my amateur photography.
***Views from 25C***
No comments:
Post a Comment