88 page
Softcover
28 (W) x 24 (D) cm / 12 x 11.5 in.
ISBN: 9780977579013

Some years ago Peter Elliston embarked on a project to photograph people at various coastlines around the Pacific Ocean, a pleasurable journey that eventually led him to Hawaii and the ‘Volcanoes National Park’.

His visit to Hawaii kindled a general interest in volcanoes and how landscapes can be rapidly altered by major natural events, like the awesome explosion of the Indonesian volcano Tambora in 1815. This event resulted in the death of at least 70,000 people and ejected 100 cubic km of material into the atmosphere. Its global impact caused the “Year Without a Summer” the eruption causing a temporary climatic cooling by sending 150 million tonnes of dust into the atmosphere, gradually spreading around the globe reflecting incoming solar radiation back into the atmosphere. The effects were felt as far away as in North America in places as far away as North America.

The photographs in ‘Volcano’ are not just about cones that exude lava and explode, but also about the people who are affected by them.  In a broad sense this includes us all, one such scenario for massive global extinction is the eruption of a super volcano like the one that occurred at Lake Toba in Sumatra around 70,000 years ago, when the population may have been reduced to a few thousand individuals. This eruption ejected nearly 3000 cubic km of material into the atmosphere, the largest eruption on Earth for the past 2 million years.

Over a span of several years Peter subsequently visited many volcanoes, from Hawaii to Tanzania all the way down to Chile, some were erupting but most were dormant, perhaps only emitting steam or sulphur dioxide.  An important site on Peter’s list was Vesuvius in Italy, which erupted violently in 79 AD and buried the nearby towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum, freezing them in time and offering an extraordinary view of life two thousand years ago.

Photographing volcanoes can be hazardous but is also very exciting. They have inspired Peter Elliston to seek them out, taking modest care in doing so. Sometimes he was fortunate to see and capture explosions of lava, other times he was able to photograph the spectacular sometimes surreal new landscape that surrounds a dormant volcano.

ABOUT PETER ELLISTON

Peter Elliston trained as a scientist but has been involved with photography from childhood.  An acclaimed physicist Peter has travelled extensively throughout the word documenting natural phenomena one of his most successful books ‘Stones and Marks’  involved travel  over  many years, to 18 countries to photograph, petroglyphs, pictographs, standing stones, monuments, and ancient ruins  Peter’s combination of photographs and writing provide an extremely rich experience for the reader. He has an enduring curiosity about our past which leads him to locate, research, decode, and record the historically significant visual and textual information found in our world.  Elliston's exquisite photographs are powerfully combined with his scholarly writing.

Australian customers: 10% GST will be added during checkout.