Left: Domenico Campagnola (Italian, ca. 1500-1564), Apocalyptic Scene with Fallen Buildings, ca. 1550. Pen and brown ink. Thaw Collection
Right: Emmet Gowin (American, b. 1941), Clear Cut, 5 Miles Southwest of Mount St. Helens, Washington, 1982 . Gelatin silver print. Collection of Emmet and Edith Gowin
A fellowship from the Seattle Arts Commission took Gowin to Washington State a few weeks after Mount St. Helens erupted in May 1980. He revisited the area eight times in four years, photographing the evolving landscape first from an airplane and then from the ground.
One of the earliest apocalyptic landscapes in Italian art is Campagnola’s. Though he may have drawn upon his experience of a 1511 earthquake in Friuli to create this scene, it is far from an eyewitness record. His imaginative rendering includes fictional and identifiable buildings fallen to ruin.