Sites of Impact: Meteorite Craters Around the World

by Stan Gaz (Photos)

The Earth is pockmarked with the evidence of ancient collisions: huge craters blasted into its surface by thousands of pounds of meteorite fragments traveling at approximately 50,000 miles per hour. Ranging in age from those formed in this century to billion-year-old specimens, the Earth's meteorite craters are eroding at a rapid pace. The best-preserved impact sites are often difficult to access--buried under ice, obscured by foliage, or baking in desert climes. These desolate landscapes are connected to another place outside of our world, and for photographer Stan Gaz they are sites of pilgrimage--steps in a journey begun as a curious young boy accompanying his father on geological expeditions, and culminating in a six-year journey traveling the globe in search of these sites, much of that time spent leaning his twenty-pound, handheld Hasselblad medium format camera out of an open-sided helicopter.

The eighty-five astounding black-and-white photographs collected in Sites of Impact transcend the purely documentary and intersect the sublime. They are large-scale, aerial landscapes infused with a child's sense of wonder and an adult's preoccupation with the fragility of life. Like the sites themselves--natural monuments to explosive destruction and concomitant creation--the images speak to the vulnerability of the Earth and the significance of our place in the universe. In addition to photographs of the craters and their surrounding landscapes, Gaz includes photographs of actual meteorites and of his own carefully crafted sculptures that recreate their often dynamic form and mimic their specific mineral content. Anecdotal passages about the artist's experiences photographing each crater are interspersed with scientific data regarding the crater's location, age, structure, and condition. An essay by Earth scientist Christian Koeberl summarizes what we know and do not know about meteorite impact events, while an essay by photo historian Robert Silberman places Gaz's pictures within the traditions of landscape photography and the aesthetics of the sublime.

Genres: Photography, Art

145 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[Kitap Yakıcı · Rating 2 out of 5]

The essays in this book are the best part, which is unfortunate, since it is primarily a book of photography. The first essay discusses the science of interplanetary collisions, and the history of that science. The second essay discusses the notion and aesthetics of the "sublime" and locates this collection of images in that artistic tradition, where the awe-some and the awe-full come together to remind the onlooker of her relative insignificance in the face of Universe.

As for the images, though, they lacked (in my estimation) the sense of the awesome and numinous that they were supposed to possess. Many of the images were flat and in some it was difficult to tell where the landscape ended and where the horizon began. I wondered if the need to discern the difference was my "insignificance" in the face of the awesomeness of nature, but I don't think so. I just didn't think the photos were all that good. (I also wonder if the photographer used B&W, rather than color, to "re-contextualize" the images and make them more like craters on the Moon than terrestrial impact sites.)

Worth a read, definitely, but the images just didn't work for me as much as I'd hoped they would.

[Anne · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wish the book had been smaller than 10.5x13" and had more photos of a variety of impact sites. A map in the book indicated there were more than a dozen in the U.S. but only 10 impact sites world wide were featured. They didn't even list the sites world wide in case people wanted to go see for themselves.
I'll grant that as a coffee table book it's OK but not much more.

[Adrian]

Full plate b&w photos of 10 meteorite sites around the world. Including Meteor Crater near Flagstaff, Arizona which I expect to see in April. There is a short geological essay at the front of interest. Cool stuff. Thanks David!

[David Corleto-Bales · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing book of photographs detailing the various meteor craters worldwide, from Quebec to Australia, with special emphasis on Meteor Crater in Arizona.