Bernhard Edmaier began his career looking under the Earth’s surface as a geologist, but watching over and capturing it from above, he learned about the planet from a whole new perspective. Merging his obsessions for geology and photography provided an outlet for the symphonic flow of his passions.
Edmaier’s training as a geologist has been an essential ingredient in his photographic work, providing the knowledge necessary to find appropriate locations and understand the processes that create striking geological features. He has been tracking ‘alien’ formations on earth for the last 20 years. Destinations asked Edmaier a few questions about his work, to accompany this photo-essay exhibiting the best of his book, Earth On Fire. We hope it helps readers gain a better understanding of these forces that have played such an important role in the formation and evolution of the planet.
We understand your partner, Dr Angelika Jung-Huttl, is a geologist as well. Is it nice to still have your foot in the door in regards to the study of the Earth?
Geology is still within my main focus… Angelika… is a science journalist and writes the text to my photo books. I am trying to make books with images which not only show the fascinating phenomena on the Earth’s surface, but also tell the story behind them: how have they come into being, or why does the Earth’s surface look the way it [does] in a particular part of the world?
It is important to us to show our readers and visitors to our exhibitions the natural beauty of our planet and to give them visual impressions of places untouched by human hands, but it is also important to us to provide our audience with some interesting information to go with them. So with our background in geology, it is much easier to understand the story of the Earth and impart our knowledge in a (hopefully) exciting and entertaining manner.
What is the most spectacular volcano you have seen, and is there a particular aspect of that volcano that captured you?
That’s difficult to say and [always] changing as well. Maybe I should tell you about quite a memorable shoot on Hawai’i. I travelled to the Big Island… to take pictures of the ongoing eruption of Kilauea Volcano. I was mainly focused on so-called active lava tubes, a rare volcanic feature and quite tricky to shoot. Just a few days before I arrived… a huge coastal bench had collapsed on the slopes of Kilauea – so there was a good chance to get a freshly broken-up lava tube. I chartered a helicopter to get as close as possible to the site of the bench collapse. As we arrived at the coast, the location was densely covered with vapour and smoke due to violent reactions of hot lava with sea water, with no way to see anything.
But my expert pilot Zac, probably remembering his experiences as a Vietnam veteran, started hovering sideways, closer and closer… Suddenly, the wind of the rotor blades blew away all the hot steam. And what a surprise! A perfect circular lava tube appeared, and plenty of red, glowing lava was pouring out of it into the sea… one of those ‘once in a lifetime’ shots.
Why do you shoot from the air?
From the aerial perspective, I can most effectively tell the narrative of a landscape. When it comes to large structures, such as mountain ranges or a chain of volcanic cones on a fissure in the Earth’s crust, it is much better to shoot them from the air than from the ground. Aerial photography is for me the technical means to create a better understanding of natural processes on our planet. Only from a bird’s eye view can I manage to depict these phenomena according to my vision of an ‘ideal’ composition.
What are some of the similarities and differences in the volcanoes you have seen?
Simply speaking, there are two types of volcanoes: the explosive ones, like Mt St Helens in the USA or White Island in New Zealand, and… the ‘calmer’ ones, like the volcanoes of Hawai’i or Erta Ale in Ethiopia. The highly-explosive ones eject mostly ash clouds high into the air, create very dangerous hot rock and gas avalanches — so-called pyroclastic flows — and their lava flows are often short and very viscous. The eruptions of the so-called effusive volcanoes are much less explosive, their lava is mostly more fluid and they can produce very long lava streams. In general, every volcano has its own character, and many of them erupt somewhere in-between highly explosive and less violent — like Mt Etna in Sicily.
How do volcanoes shape our landscape?
Volcanoes are the most awe-inspiring, fascinating, but also potentially devastating geological phenomena on earth. The most dramatic and beautiful landscapes of our planet are shaped by volcanic activity. Every time a volcano erupts, we are violently reminded that we live on a fireball and only a solid thin crust separates us from the extremely hot interior.
If hot molten rock beneath the Earth’s crust — magma — breaks through the thin crust in volcanic vents, it creates single cones and craters or even whole mountain ranges. In active volcanic landscapes you’ll find geothermal areas with geysers, fumaroles and hot springs. Those areas are often very colourful because of special minerals deposited by boiling water and hot volcanic gases, like sulphur, and because of heat-loving algae and bacteria. In regions shaped by volcanism, destruction and creation are closely interconnected. For instance, vigorous eruptions cause disaster and devastation, but on the other hand, new land will be created, and fertile material for future agriculture is deposited.
What led you to create your elemental series?
Generally speaking, my photo projects have always been supposed to provide a ‘window’ on geological processes. In our imagination, the Earth or its surface is something eternal, or with very little changes. But the opposite is true: infinite processes are continuously remodelling the surface and interior of the Earth. In showing fractures, rock folds, erosional patterns, coastlines — and of course, volcanoes and volcanic landscapes — I have been trying to visualise these geological and geomorphic processes and make them a bit more comprehensible to all.
Arenal Volcano, Costa Rica
This 1680-metre-high giant is the youngest and most active stratovolcano in Costa Rica. Scientists have dated its activity back 7000 years, though it lay it dormant for millenia before erupting again unexpectedly in 1968.
Bledug Kuwu, Indonesia
The bubbles of this geyser shoot up 10 metres into the air before they suddenly burst, sending blobs of mud flying around and releasing a white cloud of carbon dioxide. These spectacular mud eruptions occur at short intervals after rainfalls when the mud is still very wet.
Rincon de la Vieja, Costa Rica
Rincón de la Vieja is one of the most closely-watched volcanoes in Costa Rica, its active crater in particular. Filled with a hot acid lake, it has a diameter of around 500 metres. Hot corrosive mudslides rush down the mountain during eruptions, endangering villages and plantations at its foot.
Goubbet Al Karab, Djibouti
The Bay of Ghoubbet lies in the centre of a highly tectonically-active region, where violent movements of the Earth’s crust cause it to split. Fissures criss-cross the surface around it and on the sea floor, from which hot magma flows out or is spewed high in the air through volcanic necks, forming small craters. Coral reefs have formed on the solidified underwater lava rock.
Laguna Roja, Chile
It looks as if a giant has emptied a bucket of paint on this plateau in the unpopulated mountains of the Parinacota volcano region in northern Chile. The blood-red water that collects in the Laguna Roja has a temperature of 40–50 degrees Celsius. The vivid colour is due to thermophilic algae that thrive at these high temperatures.
Kilauea, Hawai’i
The lava of Kilauea is very fluid. It can form tunnels — underground outflow pipes — through which it flows all the way down to the sea, thermally insulated. A large section of Kilauea’s brittle and unstable coastal area breaks off and tumbles into the ocean, often cutting through these lava tunnels out of which the glowing material flows. Usually hidden by clouds of steam, this phenomenon is rarely seen.
Maelifell, Iceland
Maelifell, the remnant of a proud volcanic cone, is constantly washed by melt water flowing from Myrdalsjökull. It is just 100 metres high and covered by a thick layer of green spring moss.
White Island, New Zealand
White Island is the peak of a volcano stemming from the sea floor. This volcanic island is situated in the Bay of Plenty, 48 kilometres from the east coast of the North Island of New Zealand. Measured from the sea floor, the volcano is around 1000 metres high, but only 321 metres are above sea level. The crater acquired its characteristic horseshoe shape during a fierce eruption, which crushed its wall.
Interview by Rowena Bahl
Photography by Bernhard Edmaier