The Big Cloud | Camille Seaman

They can be up to eighty kilometres wide and reach as high as 20,000 metres into the atmosphere. The clouds Seaman was chasing were so large they could block out the daylight, creating a dark, ominous space beneath them.

Seaman is not a born storm-chaser. When she began chasing in 2008, she knew little about what she was doing or about the weather more broadly. She was trying to answer a question from a previous, decade-long project documenting icebergs in the polar regions: how might melting ice affect the weather in more temperate zones?

She was not prepared for just how overwhelming the experience of chasing could be, just how visceral and multi-sensory. There were the smells of the charged particles, the sweetness of the grass, the pavement just before it rains, as well as the sight of the wind blowing the wheat or cornfields, the colours of the clouds, the light of the sky, and the lightning.

It was all so beautiful, so awesome, and so humbling. Over the years, Seaman learned a great deal about the technical aspects and the science of chasing, as well as the lingo and culture. Sometimes, as she pulled into a local fuel station with her fellow chasers, they would be met with suspicious glances. Some people had lost homes, some had even lost loved ones. It was important to remember that these people lived here year after year, never knowing if this was the year, the month, or the day when a tornado might come through their town.

The experience taught Seaman to feel great empathy and compassion for local people. Her images were never about what these storms destroyed or the pain and damage they inflicted. She always wanted them to speak to the duality of all things – there is no creation without destruction; a cloud can be beautiful, terrible, or both – the embodiment of the sublime. There is no art more dramatic, in scale or emotion, than that created by nature. At the end of the day, we are the storm.