Photographs by Jan Staller
Flood Plain: An Original Story by Luc Sante

On Planet Earth: Travels in an Unfamiliar Land collects Jan Staller’s strangely seductive photographs from locations across the United States and around the world—from abandoned factories to military test sites, from high-tech water-purification plants to heavy machinery that looks like it fell from outer space. Staller’s square-format and panoramic photographs reveal bizarre and forgotten constructions of industrial society, set against a symphony of color and light.

A sense of mystery pervades Staller’s images: ordinary building devices and machine parts take on the aura of Surrealist sculptures, while common construction sites echo the sacred grounds of ancient civilizations. Using long exposures and a combination of light sources—often photographing at dawn or dusk—Staller produces photographs that are breathtakingly rich in color and intensity.

Complementing the images in On Planet Earth is a narrative by Luc Sante, who shares Staller’s fascination with urban and industrial wastelands, the history they contain, and the mysteries they conceal. Together, Staller’s photographs and Sante’s text offer a stimulating, Technicolor tour of the unknown at the edge of the contemporary landscape.

95 pages; color photographs; 27 x 29 cm.
ISBN: 0-89381-730-9

Jacket design by Carol Devine Carson
Book design by Wendy Setzer
Printed and bound by Mariogros Industrie, Grafiche, Torino, Italy
Color separations by Sele Offset Torino, S. R. L., Italy

First edition
Aperture Foundation, Inc., New York, 1997
Photographs: Jan Staller, 1997
Story: Luc Sante, 1997