Critical Mass Gems | Leslie Gleim
October 30, 2025
The Earth Cries Fiercely
It’s time for some gems from Photolucida’s Critical Mass. First up, since we seem to be on a geological streak here at Pictura…. Leslie Gleim’s The Earth Cries Fiercely.
With a view from a helicopter, Leslie Gleim allows herself to consider geological forces in Hawaii from a distance, with an almost anthropomorphic lens on the earth’s movements. Scarlet lines of heat move in strange shapes, like rivers of energy through the darkness. Plumes of smoke rise where the lava collides with the sea. Gleim’s images read like chiaroscuro paintings, where the classical elements are engaged in a great drama.
Gleim presents lava, not as a dark evil, but as a natural response, a voice and a counter reaction from the earth to the abuses it has endured. It’s not a new idea, but there’s something new to me about what’s offered here — the clarity of her gaze, and her surprising capacity for neutrality towards a destructive force.
The pictures reveal things that have been stranded as the earth shifts and transforms. Housing structures, beaches, and roads are all covered over by an immovable blanket of black rock. These photographs get to me, human endeavors cut off mid-stride, like the paved road that falls abruptly into the pit.
Roads, carved with industrious intention, grant free access from one part of the island to another. A curving strip of a road is surrounded by green grass and graced by a slice of sunlight. But now it’s marooned, between two dark waves. The roads constructed to tame the land, to make the wild lands traversable, are rendered useless. From this height, it becomes clear that ultimately, we cannot tame her.
-Lisa Woodward
Over time, I began to see these events not just as moments of crisis, but as part of the Earth’s ongoing conversation between land, history, and human presence. Each photograph encapsulates her intimate reactions: lava reclaiming the land, the skeletons of trees in once-lush fields, the delicate line between destruction, transformation, and renewal. These are the Earth’s fierce responses — part grief, part resistance, part endurance.