CALDERA EXHIBITION COMPANION by Christopher Campbell and Strata Editions
Strata Editions, 2025
5 × 8 in
60 pages
Black and white digital printing
Softcover with saddle-sewn binding
Gatefold with graphic reveal
This exhibition companion was created on the occasion of Strata’s fourth collection, Caldera: Photographs by Christopher Campbell.
Edited by Alexa Dilworth, with reproductions of the photographs on exhibit, original writing by Christopher Campbell, and an interview between himself and Caitlin McCann, this companion expounds on Campbell’s contemplation of Yellowstone not as a national park but as a “significant piece of raw geology, with human beings lurking at its edges.”
Christopher Campbell (b. 1971) is a photographer living and working in the American West. He has lived in Four Corners, Montana, for the past three decades with his wife, Michelle. Campbell’s work explores two polestars of the West, the land and the people. The land exists independently of the people who tenant or pass over it, yet people can’t exist without the land.
The American West is a landscape of enduring geology, continuously changing with the passage of time. The land’s rigid surface conceals a delicate nature, one that indelibly registers human exploitation and trespasses. Campbell has long understood that the American West is in crisis due to overdevelopment, extractive processes, and increased demands on ranching and agriculture. These practices and pressures place an untenable demand on two of the West’s most precious resources: open space and water. Campbell’s exploration of place seeks to reveal the devastating beauty inherent in the land, while being honest about how our destructive tendencies threaten what sustains us.
“A caldera is a large, deep depression on the surface of a volcano. Yellowstone’s caldera was created by repeated eruptions of a supervolcano of world-altering proportions over millions of years; the most recent one happened approximately 640,000 years ago (as a point of reference, it was 1,000 times larger than the 1980 eruption of Mount Saint Helens). Time in Yellowstone is strongly felt because its imprint can be read in the geology and geography—and on a smaller scale, in the biological record, and even more minutely, in evidence left by humans, a sliver of time in the existence of our planet.”
—Christopher Campbell
The Caldera exhibition companion was designed by Jeemin Shim and Miguel Gajdos. It was produced by D&K Printing, a family-owned business that explores sustainable printing methods based in Boulder, Colorado.