Sites of Impact: Meteorite Craters Around the World

Sites of Impact: Meteorite Craters Around the World by Gaz, Stan. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9781568988153.

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 medium format camera out of an open-sided helicopter. The eightyfive astounding black-and-white photographs collected in Sites of Impact transcend the purely documentary and intersect the sublime. 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.