On June 6, 1912, among the Katmai volcanoes and its resident native
people, an unforgettable natural event occurred: the largest
volcanic eruption on Earth during the twentieth century. In size
comparable to Indonesia's Krakatau in 1883 and Tambora in 1815, one
must go back 2,000 years to the north island of New Zealand to find
as large a release of rhyolite magma. The actual eruption took
place about 100 miles west of Kodiak in the Aleutian Range on the
Alaskan Peninsula. In three days, a new volcano-Novarupta-was born.
More than five cubic miles of ash and debris flew into the
atmosphere, with heavier deposits filling an adjacent
forty-four-square-mile valley in depths up to 1,000 feet. The
dense, superheated waves of magmatic spray incinerated all living
organisms, leaving a hot bed of igneous material that, when mixed
with water from the surrounding glaciers and snowfields, produced
tens of thousands of steam vents known as fumaroles. Thus was born
the Valley of 10,000 Smokes. Native villages, some thousands of
years old, were abandoned and never reestablished. The eruption was
of such consequence that the National Geographic Society sent
Robert F. Griggs to direct a four-year expedition to the site.
Griggs and his party recorded their scientific expedition in
stunning black-and-white photographs and moving text, which led to
the publication of a 50-page article in National Geographic
Magazine in 1918 and a subsequent book issued by the Society in
1922 that remains available today. Gary Freeburg has traveled to
the Valley of 10,000 Smokes five times, from 2000 to 2011, in
pursuit of rephotography of the contemporary landscape and the
larger experience of wilderness. Although the fumaroles that Griggs
so vividly portrays in words and pictures are largely gone, and
that element of visual and volcanic activity has largely ceased, in
Freeburg's photographs one can still feel the steam-filled air,
sense the deafening noise of the eruption, and grasp the incredible
physical forces that created this alluring landscape. Now preserved
as part of the 4.7-million-acre Katmai National Park and Preserve,
the Valley of 10,000 Smokes continues to inspire-not just esteemed
volcanologists such as John Eichelberger and expert cultural
anthropologists such as Jeanne Schaaf, but great artists such as
Gary Freeburg who seek out the Alaskan sublime, as it is revealed
in one of Earth's most remote, raw, and wild places. (See the
publisher's website for further information on exhibits, book
signings, and to view a slide show:
http://gftbooks.com/books_Freeburg.html ).
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