Published by Aperture in 2013, Mitch Dobrowner’s Storms gathers black-and-white photographs of monsoons, tornadoes, thunderstorms, and structured supercells encountered across the American West and Midwest. Dobrowner worked in the field with professional storm chaser Roger Hill, placing the project at the intersection of sustained photographic attention and the practical knowledge required to approach severe weather.

These pictures treat storms not simply as meteorological events but as individual presences. Dobrowner has described them as living, changeable entities, each with its own character; his aim is therefore closer to portraiture than detached documentation. Dense cloud formations and rotating systems become monumental shapes against comparatively spare terrain. The monochrome palette emphasizes mass, light, texture, and internal movement, while connecting the work to an established tradition of American landscape photography. Ansel Adams and Minor White are identified among Dobrowner’s formative influences, yet the turbulent atmosphere here replaces the stable grandeur associated with more familiar views of the West.

The book’s introduction by travel writer and poet Gretel Ehrlich extends that context through language, considering both storms and the landscape tradition of the American West. Her contribution establishes a dialogue between photographic observation and literary evocation without reducing the images to illustrations. Across 96 pages, the volume concentrates on a single, demanding body of work rather than offering a general survey of the photographer’s practice.

Storms deserves attention from collectors because it is documented as the first book devoted to Dobrowner’s storm photographs, a subject that had become central to his work. Its large horizontal hardcover format—approximately 36.6 by 25.9 centimetres—also suits the breadth and layered structure of the cloud systems. More than a record of extreme weather, the book is a focused study of how contemporary photography can renew the sublime landscape: through close pursuit, technical control, and an alertness to forms that exist only briefly before they transform or disappear.