Yet another tornado warning

Francis Alÿs, Tornado, 2000- present

"Every year since 2001 Alÿs, at the highpoint of the dry season in March, drives his car to the southeast edge of Mexico City where smoky clouds rise from cornfields burning after the harvest, and grey swirls of ash and sand loom on the horizon. He carries his video camera and runs toward the tornadoes hoping to catch them as a surfer catches a wave. His nose and mouth are protected only by a handkerchief. Once he reaches one, he runs into the eye of the storm and stays as long as possible. This is an absurd act but he tries to forge a moment of bliss in the midst of chaos."


Susan Silton, From Twisters and Twisted, Twister #2, 2003

From the website: "Susan Silton's Twisters are digitally manipulated photographs of tornadoes originally taken by professional storm chasers, which she then reduces to a small, intimate scale, and converts to black & white with a richness and subtlety reminiscent of drawings or a fine silverprint. Long interested in the aesthetics and metaphor of movement, she is known for her colorful Aviate series of streaking abstractions generated from bookplates of birds. Her new tornado images show spectacular spectral funnels that fissure the atmosphere with a concentration of wind-energy and swirling pressures. Milky-white streams puncture a dark enveloping sky and touch the ground in turbulent, body-like, ways."


Twister #5, 2003


Twister #6, 2003