Ian Brown's printmaking practice explores the mutability of the photographic image and the effects of its translation into other print media. He invariably uses found images - for example, hand-tinted postcards, as seen reproduced along the lower edge of this print. The Natural Disaster series was inspired by the global financial meltdown, and the imagery - of erupting volcanoes, fires, and storms - stands as a metaphor for the crisis and its effects, paralleled by the destructive power of natural phenomena.

Brown's prints are explicit about the character of photomechanical print process, and the ways in which visual illusions are achieved. In this print the main image appears, at a distance, to be printed in shades of grey, but close up it can be seen as a 4-colour separation (magenta, cyan, yellow and black); this can itself be seen as a simple metaphor for the fact that we can understand an event in different ways, depending on our relation to the event - such as whether we are nearby or far away, and whether it is something on which we are well-informed or ignorant.