Publisher's Synopsis
Nature's chaos presents colour photographs by Eliot Porter, each highlighting a different element of his lifelong fascination with what he calls the "jumble and disorder in nature". The scenes span 35 years and five continents - from the Antartic ice floe to the American desert to the Icelandic lava field. They featuere the wildness - the chaos of mountains and forest regions, plains and deserts, rivers and coastlines. Porter selects the photographs to illustrate the orderly disorder described in James Gleick's recent book, "Chaos". In an essay of 10,000 words, and in text accompanying the photographs, James Gleick describes the links being forged between the abstractions of science and the vivid images of natural beauty. Some artists have long tried to subdue and civilize nature, to pull its fangs, just as scientists have tried to organize and classify the wildness they found. Now, however, science and art together are finding a new way to perceive nature's chaos.
