Above is an aerial view of heavy metal waste caused by fertilizer production. The photograph, titled "Crucible," is the work of artist J. Henry Fair. He flies in small planes over oil refineries, paper mills, and factories to take shots of environmental decay and toxic industrial sites. Fair's solo exhibition, titled Abstraction of Destruction," opens January 13 at New York's Gerald Peters Gallery. His new photo book The Day After Tomorrow: Images of Our Earth in Crisis is published next month. From Smithsonian:
J Henry Fair: "Abstraction of Destruction" (Gerald Peters Gallery)Fair, who lives in New York State, consults scientists to better understand the images in his viewfinder: vast cranberry red ponds of hazardous bauxite waste spewed by aluminum smelters; kelly green pits filled with byproducts, some radioactive, from the manufacture of fertilizer. But pollution never looked so good. “To make an image that stops people it has to be something that tickles that beauty perception and makes people appreciate the aesthetics,” says Fair, who specialized in portraiture before taking to the skies.
His goal is not to indict—he doesn’t identify the polluters by name—but to raise public awareness about the costs of our choices.
Aerial photos of industrial eco-messes
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