A small portion of the dozens of black-and-white photos she shot with a 35mm Canon and a 2€-by-2€ Hasselblad are on display today and tomorrow at Native Books/Na Mea Hawai'i, and are reprinted in "Bamboo Ridge 25th Anniversary Issue," in celebration of the UH literary and arts journal that was founded the year of her Kalapana project.

Not only would she make friendships in Kalapana that have lasted all through the intervening years, but she would become a proponent of a style of long-term photographic documentation that involves commitment to bettering the lives of the people chronicled. She created a foundation, the Not for Profit Network/Photographers Working for Social Change, which mounts periodic exhibits in New York City (she now lives in her childhood home of Greenfield Center, N.Y.).

Looking back, she says, it was an unusual, possibly unique, situation: In the summer of 1971, Kalapana, which would later be destroyed by lava flows, was known as a place where Hawaiian was routinely spoken and a traditional Hawaiian subsistence lifestyle was maintained. Some homes didn't even have running water or electricity. No one had telephones.

She recalls how her guide, Jewel Momi Ka'awaloa, would say, "Let's go see Auntie Daisy today," and they'd drive up to Auntie Daisy's, and Momi would call out the greeting, "Hooooooo-eee!" and Auntie Daisy would appear and they'd talk story. Over a couple of months, Lynch became so much a part of the landscape that the people seemed to forget she was there. She'd get right up close, snapping away, and they'd just keep doing whatever they were doing.

The reason, she thinks, is that those now-deceased Kalapana kupuna (elders) formed a tacit partnership with her. They knew change was coming fast — a large resort development was on the books for the area — and they wanted to know that their stories and the ways of their lives would be preserved for their children and grandchildren.

She speaks unblushingly of the blessing she received in knowing these people, and the blessing for her daughter — "to be surrounded by such warmth and openness; the human values, the ethics that are at the heart of Hawaiian spirituality and Hawaiian everyday practices."

Kalapanans knew they lived on a volcano and were phlegmatic about it. "Hawaiians believe in a natural order to things, and they personify that control for that order in the various deities. The thing that they said over and over in Kalapana was, 'If the change gets too great, Pele will come.' " Many accepted what happened as "Pele cleaning house," Lynch said.

In the early 1970s, the Kalapana photos were shown in a traveling exhibit that visited Island libraries, Lynch's way of joining those who were protesting development in the area. Another show launched her foundation in New York City in the 1990s.

In summer 2003, Lynch mounted a collection of the photos, as well as many Kalapana artifacts, at the Lyman Museum in Hilo. The event brought the entire, scattered Kalapana 'ohana together. People wept as they saw photos of relatives long gone, beloved vanished houses and scenes of daily life.

For Lynch, the exhibit and its reception were a triumphant response to the lugubrious characterization of Kalapana as "the last Hawaiian place" or "the lost Hawaiian village."

"This is all very true in terms of what the lava did. The Kalapana that was, those houses, can't come back. But the kupuna would have gone their way in any case, and change would have come."

Many former Kalapanans resettled nearby.