Living on Lava takes the Big Island of Hawaii as its subject, where, as the publisher describes it, volcanic forces shape both the landscape and the way people live. Five volcanoes form the island. Mauna Loa is identified as the largest active volcano in the world, and Kīlauea has been erupting continuously since 1983. Residents build homes on lava once it has cooled, knowing molten rock may one day cross the same ground. Between eruptions, Pacific winds carry what the publisher calls the cleanest air on Earth. Lucas Foglia’s attention falls on this arrangement rather than on eruption as spectacle: the project is about habitation, the allure of the island, and the terms on which people settle ground that is still being remade.

Foglia is the photographer, and Living on Lava is his fourth book with Nazraeli Press. It appears as number 41 in the publisher’s One Picture Book Two series and is issued as a hardcover with sixteen four-color plates. Each copy includes a 5 x 7 inch original photograph signed by the artist; the edition is limited to 500 numbered copies. The book and the loose print together define the object: a compact sequence of plates bound as a book, accompanied by a photographic print that exists outside the page.

The subject is present-day rather than historical. The Big Island Foglia photographs is one where geology, climate, and daily routine are not separable, and where the possibility of new flows is part of ordinary calculation. The publisher frames the work through that coexistence and through the attraction the island holds despite the risk.

Collectors of Foglia’s work or of Nazraeli’s series will find the combination of a signed original print with a bound sequence of plates to be the defining feature here, alongside the stated limitation of 500 numbered copies.