SINUOUS red streams of aluminium-processing waste and bright green vegetation light up this aerial view of an industrial reservoir on the lower Mississippi river, about 50 kilometres south of Baton Rouge. At first glance, the vivid colours suggest beauty, but the image is meant to cause alarm, says photographer J. Henry Fair.
Producing aluminium from bauxite ore generates a toxic sludge called 鈥渞ed mud鈥� that is visible around the edges of the football-field-sized area pictured here. When a similar reservoir containing the substance burst in Hungary in 2010, four people were killed and there was catastrophic ecological damage.
Advertisement
Fair wants to get us to think about what we choose to buy and throw away, as well as the environmental impact of something as simple as failing to recycle an aluminium can.
鈥淭he pictures are an effort to show these things to people in a way that makes them question, and hopefully think about, the impact,鈥� he says.
The photograph below is another bird鈥檚-eye view, this time of a field in Germany. The shadows cast by surrounding trees have stopped some of the rapeseed plants from flowering.
Both images are part of a series taken over 15 years from a small plane and collected in the book Industrial Scars, published by Papadakis this week.
This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淏eautiful sludge鈥�
