Stephen Vaughan

  • Loowit (Mount St Helens)

    On 18 May 1980, at 8.32am, a 5.2 magnitude earthquake triggered an enormous landslide on the northern side of Mount St Helens. As the side of the volcano collapsed, a lateral blast erupted through the remaining barrier, spewing ash and debris in pyroclastic flows that decimated the surrounding landscape and scorched 230 square miles of forest.
    These photographs were made inside the crater of Mount St Helens volcano – in the Loowit Canyon and at the terminus of the new Crater Glacier that has formed around its lava dome. The trek to the heart of the volcano was a rare opportunity for me to study a landscape that remains a magnificently raw geological space, 40 years after the eruption.

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