Gohlke followed this up by photographing the devastation in and around Mount St. Helens in Washington after it erupted in 1980. A pair of close-up panoramic shots show trees 12 miles from the volcano that were ripped down by its blast. Another photo shows thousands of trees scattered like toothpicks across a dark mountainside six miles from the volcano, with a peak rising ominously out of clouds in the background. Gohlke returned to the same riverside five times between 1981 and 1990 to watch it transform from a barren shore crossed by downed trees to a place thick with young trees. His shots are good, but it’s his subject — the awesome elemental drama of tornadoes and volcanoes — that makes these photos so fascinating.
Subsequent photos of mundane subjects (a woman watering her garden, a green Louisiana swamp, a railroad crossing) feel blah, perhaps purposely so. Early 1990s photos of Massachusetts’s Sudbury River are slightly more interesting because of their large scale and rich color. It looks as if Gohlke were studying Lee Friedlander’s aggressively offhand compositions and finger-in-front-of-the-lens æsthetic. But whereas Friedlander’s work is memorable for its wrongness and his acid eye for the ugly mediocrity often associated with the American scene, Gohlke’s feels just bland.
Related:
Time out of mind, Lighting history, Art in the air conditioning, More 
- Time out of mind
Luisa Rabbia created a slow-moving video work that offers a kind of travelogue of her own journey through Isabella Stewart Gardner's historic scrapbooks.
- Lighting history
On January 1, 1903, Isabella Stewart Gardner invited 300 guests to a private concert by members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra to celebrate the opening of her new museum on the Fenway. After performances of Bach, Mozart, and Schumann, the mirrored doors of the first-floor concert room rolled open to reveal an extraordinary vision.
- Art in the air conditioning
From Picasso to William "Shrek" Steig's cartoons, and surfer photos to a Twilight Zone toy store, New England offers art worth traveling to this summer. Here we round up the best in the region, no matter the weather or your artistic inclinations.
- Photos: Topping Ceremony at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
Getting topped
- How a Rembrandt wound up on a pig farm
The next time you're bored on a Friday night and considering a caper at the RISD Museum, Anthony Amore wants you to consider this: you're more likely to make a few bucks begging the high school crowd on Thayer Street.
- Musical acrobats
Having Antonio Sanchez explain the difference between "straight 8's" and "swing 8's" is a bit like having Einstein explain long division — total waste of the dude's time.
- Stolen
By buying up her favorite artworks and displaying them for posterity in her museum, Isabella Stewart Gardner removed them from the sphere of commerce and preserved them for the enjoyment of all.
- Pottery, Potter, mummies, and a 'Rare Bird'
The art of 2000 BC Egypt, visions from the Iraq War and AIDS activism, and the magic of a digital technology and Harry Potter make up the highlights of Boston's autumn art calendar.
- 52 ways to leave 2009
Your usual lackadaisical approach to New Year's Eve — just see what happens and go with the flow — is not going to cut it this year. Sure, the end of this decade may not have the same kind of new-millennium pressure riding on it as the last one, but the plunge into 2010 is a milestone nonetheless.
- Fresh fruit and vegetables
The bleakest months of New England winter are ahead of us, so the prospect of leaving your toasty house to see art may not be at the top of your to-do list.
- Works in progress
Back in October, Minnesota photographer Alec Soth spoke at MassArt. "Facebook: 15 billion uploaded photos," he said. "At its busiest, 550,000 images each second being uploaded. So I've been struggling with that. How do I function as a photographer in that environment?"
- Less
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Museum And Gallery
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