Scars Of OUR WORLD
Our lifestyle encourages the lust for minerals. The industrial growing of fuel – and extractive materials interferes nature and leaves deep tracks on our earth’s surface.
Earth’s treasures are unevenly spread; some lie deep in the crust (unattainable for humans), others slumber close to the surface. This means misfortune for environmentalists and blessings for the extractive industry. They approach with heavy machines and rip the landscape apart.
The American photographer J. Henry Fair displayed a few of these scars in an excellent photo series called “Industrial Scars”, that he is popular around the world. Aside from being a photographer, he could be also an environmental activist and co-founder and director of the Wolf Conservation Center (WCC). The WCC promotes wolf conservation by teaching about wolves, their relationship to the surroundings, and the human role in protecting their future. He works for environmental organizations such as for example NRDC, Rainforest Alliance or Greenpeace.
About his work he states:
“Might work is a reaction to my vision of society. I see our culture to be dependent on petroleum and the unsustainable usage of other natural resources, which appears to portend another of scarcity. My vision is of another possibility, attained through careful husbandry of resources and adjustment of our desires and consumption patterns toward another of health insurance and plenty. To gear our civilization toward sustainability will not necessitate sacrifice today, as much naysayers would argue, but merely adjustment. There are lots of societies existing at the moment that have a typical of living at the very least as high as ours while consuming and polluting a fraction of what's the norm in america. Being an artist with a note, one asks oneself: how do you translate my message to my medium so that it will effect the change I'd like?
Initially, I photographed “ugly” things; that is, in essence, throwing the problem in people’s faces. As time passes, I begun to photograph each one of these things having an eye to making them both beautiful and frightening simultaneously, a seemingly irreconcilable mission, but actually quite achievable given the topic matter.”
Below are a few of his photos (my own favourite):
The forested mountains, valleys and streams that once stood listed below are now buried under the overburden from mountaintop removal coal mining. It really is leveled and sprayed with an assortment of grass seed and fertilizer – Kayford Mountain, West Virginia.
Removal of Overburden from blasting – Kayford Mountain, West Virginia
Caustic lake – Darrow, Louisiana.
Outlet pipe from phosphate waste impoundment – Lakeland, Florida.
Sulphur stacks at an oil sands upgrader facility – Fort Murray, Canada.
The within of a holding tank at an oil sands upgrader facility – Fort McMurray, Canada.
