Emmet Gowin has gained a reputation for his poetically flavored photographs that mainly revolve around intimate portraits and family shots, and momentary snapshots of casual everyday life. The outbreak in 1980 of Mount St. Helens in the Cascade Range, USA, was the event that inspired him to start taking aerial photographs. He thoughtfully observes the transformation and destruction of landscapes and topographies through the power of nature and human activity, and captures in a physical manner the lines that such developments leave behind in the landscape. These photographs describe the surface of our planet in a quiet and scrupulous manner.