But a closer look at these images reveals that all is not as it seems.

The images are digital composites compiled using photographs of garbage dumps. Large mounds of garbage are covered in sheets of green protective nets.  The artist photographs these mounds and then re-assembles the images to create these bucolic landscapes. Viewed quickly or from afar, these are beautiful landscape images. Closer to, they are mounds of garbage.

As China undergoes rapid industrialization and urbanization, these huge mounds of garbage are generated everywhere with significant damage to the environment.  Yao Lu has inverted the historical process. While China turns its landscape into one huge garbage dump, the artist, alchemist like, has turned garbage into the beautiful, romanticized Chinese landscape which is rapidly disappearing.

For a different take on the relationship between beauty and garbage, see the work of Edward Burtynsky.

For a closer look at Yao Lu’s images in larger format, look here.

“I had been hired to photograph a town in the process of being erased. The American Electric Power Company had paid residents of Cheshire a lump sum to leave, never come back and never complain in the media or in court if they became sick from environmental contaminates spewed out by the AEP plant. The company was buying itself a lawsuit-free future.”

Having completed the project, Epstein could not get Cheshire out of his mind and embarked on a project called American Power. “I wanted to photograph the relationship between American society and the American landscape, and energy was the lynchpin.”

The result of the project is a set of images of the creation and consumption of power in America. The images starkly show how both energy production and its consumption are inextricably intertwined with everyday life in America.

Some of the images serve as somber reminders of the perverse ways in which America uses its power and its cultural relationship to these uses. One such photograph is that of a now disused electric chair affectionately known as ‘Old Sparky’.

Other images show the huge and irreversible impact that power generation has had on the landscape.

Just as revealing as the photographs themselves are the difficulties that Epstein encountered as he toured the country creating these images. He describes ‘systematic harassment’ as he tried to photograph power plants and other installations: “Law enforcement officials more than once ran me out of town when I had done nothing remotely criminal. The result was that from 2003-2008 – a span that coincided with the Bush era – most of where I went in the United States to work I went in fear.”

And, in case harassment was insufficient, here is a description of one incident when he was stopped for questioning: “..an unmarked car arrived. A middle aged man in a suit and tie stepped out and flashed his ID : FBI. “You know,” he said, “if you were a Muslim, you’d be cuffed and taken in for questioning.” Long live the land of the free!

The project is now the subject of an interactive web site that aims to collect people’s views and start an online discussion around the question – What is American Power?

“ When I first went to Kenya in August 1955, I could never have guessed what was going to happen. ….. it was authentic, unspoiled, teeming with big game — so enormous it appeared inexhaustible. 

Everyone agreed it was too big to be destroyed. Now Kenya’s population of over 30 million drains the country’s limited and diminishing resources at an amazing rate: surrounding, isolating, and relentlessly pressuring the last pockets of wildlife in denatured Africa.

The beautiful play period has come to an end. Millions of years of evolutionary processes have been destroyed in the blink of an eye.”

His first works were in the form of more-or-less “straight” documentation of the process of destruction.  This was not conservation photography mediated through a romanticized view of nature and wilderness.  Rather the images were a powerful testament to the impact of man’s interaction with his environment.

Though these initial images were powerful and shocking, Beard soon moved on to the use of complex collages and detailed diaries.  Here he juxtaposed writings, images, paint, found objects, newspaper clippings, drawings, insects or animal bones and often his own blood to create powerful and mesmerizing artworks.

Increasingly complex, Beard’s large collages contain many, seemingly unrelated images.  Yet they are put together in a way that creates a feeling of violence and destruction.  The same intensity of feeling emerges from his tightly packed diary pages.

As well as his passion for Kenya and it’s wanton destruction, Beard’s life was surrounded by beauty, celebrity and the world of fashion.  Based in Montauk, NY, he was part of an artistic and celebrity circle that included Andy Warhol, Jackie Onassis, Bianca Jagger and many others.  Not restricted to images of elephants in Africa, his photography and collage took in supermodels, celebrities and fashion – sometimes all of them ending up on the same page.

Perhaps this mix of celebrity, fashion and concern with conservation reached its peak when he was commissioned to produce the Pirelli calendar in 2009.

On his web site, Beard describes his career as “Escapism through collage, books, diaries and anthropology“.  Through its broad range of subject matter, Beard’s work maintains a continual sense of action, movement, intensity and power with a strong element of violence – sometimes obvious – sometimes as undercurrent.  Beard is a prolific artist who used his skills to bring much attention to Man’s endless capacity for violent destruction of his own planet.  A vast collection of his work has been compiled in a recent book published by Taschen.

Harri Kallio has tried to give us an insight into this lost-forever part of our world with his series “The Dodo and Mauritius Island”

Harri Kallio - Image 1

Kallio undertook extensive research into the dodo, what it looked like, its likely habits and its habitats. He then built two life-size models of the bird and traveled to Mauritius – the only island where the dodo is known to have existed.  There he set up tableaux and photographed his birds in what would have been their natural settings.

Harri Kallio - Image 2

Kallio’s image bring back a world that we have destroyed. European explorers arrived in Mauritius in the 16th century. They brought with them dogs, pigs, rats and other animals that plundered the dodo’s nests. Combined with forest destruction that destroyed the bird’s habitat, the dodo became extinct within 200 years.  This pattern of destruction and extinction continues today – only at a much accelerated rate. The list of threatened and endangered species continues to grow in the face of human destruction.

Harri Kallio’s work makes me wonder how many more animal models we our children have to build in the future to recreate that which we are happily destroying.

Harri Kallio - Image 3

Of his various series, two stand out.

The first is called “Running The Numbers – a portrait of consumer mass culture“.  In these two series, Jordan takes a specific number of items – a number with meaning – constructs an image with these items then photographs the image.

For instance, Shark Teeth is a collection of 270,000 fossilized shark teeth put together to construct an image of two sharks.  270,000 represents the estimated number of sharks that are killed every day around the world for their fins.

"Shark Teeth" - Full Image

Detail of fossilized shark's teeth that make up the previous image

“Midway” is a series of photographs that is emotionally much more striking than Running the Numbers.  Jordan describes this series as follows:

“These photographs of albatross chicks were made on Midway Atoll, a tiny stretch of sand and coral near the middle of the North Pacific. The nesting babies are fed bellies-full of plastic by their parents, who soar out over the vast polluted ocean collecting what looks to them like food to bring back to their young. On this diet of human trash, every year tens of thousands of albatross chicks die on Midway from starvation, toxicity, and choking.”

From Series "Midway"

From Series "Midway"

I find the contrast between these two series interesting.  Running the Numbers is essentially an intellectual exercise based on shocking statistics and converted into cleverly constructed images.  Midway appeals to our raw emotions. It is a simpler series that depicts terrible consequences of our consumption. Because it’s clever, Running the Numbers is probably more likely to appeal to the art establishment.  In fact, one piece was recently included in an exhibit at the Royal Academy in London about human impact on the planet.  But, if the objective of this art were not to appeal to the artistic elite but to convince people that these issues are important and that some action is needed, which of these two series is likely to be the more effective?  I know where I’d be putting my money.

Minkkinen is a Finnish photographer who created ‘self-portraits’ of a different kind. He set himself the task of creating a set of photographs of his own body, or parts of his body, unclothed and generally in some sort of natural environment. The result is a set of potent, elegant and often surprising images.

Self Portrait

Minkinnen’s focus was the exploration of process and the creation of clean, elegant and visually powerful imagery.  Re-interpreting his work today, in a world occupied with environmental concerns, the images become a powerful statement on Man’s relationship with the natural environment.

Looking at these images I am left with the feeling that Man’s relationship with nature has been reduced to that of an intruder; an unwelcome presence that no longer belongs in a natural environment.  All sorts of questions spring to mind. Will our handiwork continue to smother all that is around us?  How long will it take us to snuff out the light and everything that gives life to this world?
As polar ice caps continue to melt, world leaders head to Copenhagen in December for yet more talk, talk, talk as a substitute for any meaningful action.  When they emerge, in which direction will we be headed?

Left, Right, Business as Usual?

Maybe one of Minkkinnen’s most powerful images is the one below. He titled it simply – ‘Self-Portrait, Narrangansett’. What I see is a desperate scream at the point where the Man-made meets what’s left of the natural world.

It has been said that artists do not own the interpretation of their art.  Once an artist puts his art work ‘out there’ it becomes public property, subject to different opinions and interpretations.  It may end up with a meaning that is quite different from what the artist intended.  Focused on the modernist concerns of line and aesthetic, Minkinnen never intended his work to be a commentary on environmental issues. Yet, in today’s postmodern world, it is difficult to see it as anything else.

In her series named “Domesticated” she examines aspects of today’s human relationship to animals and, by implication, to ‘nature’. Looking at her images, I find myself moving through a whole range of thoughts and emotions.

A deer looks forlorn sitting by the side of a highway with the lights of human habitation in the background.  This simple image a stark illustration of how we have invaded these animals’ living quarters.  Tomorrow will this deer just be road kill?

A coyote howls helplessly at an overbearingly bright street lamp. The coyote looks incongruous and powerless.  His howls ineffectual in terrain that has been appropriated and ‘domesticated’ by humans – two pathetic trees, planted and tied down, the only nod towards the natural landscape that was once here.

"Howl"

The simple image of a brown bear with a white plastic bag over his face evokes all sorts of thoughts of human encroachment, discarded waste and our ability to disable, damage and destroy even the supposedly more powerful of animals through our thoughtlessness.

"Struggle"

Two images in particular lay bare our cultural relationship to animals.  Two boys terrorize and attack a defenseless, terrified raccoon trapped cowering in the corner of a basketball court.  None of us can fail to recognize in this image the way our culture has led us to these behaviors – from young boys pulling the legs off spiders to whole industries abusing animals in factory farms.

Roman Candle

And these boys will no doubt grow up to be brave and fearless he-men.  Like the macho hunk featured in his hunting jacket, safely behind a wire fence as he bravely levels his shotgun and takes aim at……………a turkey!  This caricature of all modern ‘hunting’ is the type of image that makes one laugh with what has been powerfully described as ‘the laugh that makes you cry’ at how pathetic so many of our behaviors have become.

"Backyard"

The last image I will reproduce here is one that, for me, encapsulates the relationship that our urban society now has with ‘nature’. The elderly lady pictured here is enclosed in her artificial, uninspiring, cookie-cutter human habitation.  She keeps caged birds – a pitiful attempt at having some form of contact with the natural world – even as she is reduced to peering out of her own cage to an outside world she doesn’t seem to understand or have any meaningful contact with.

"Window"

Like all imagery, Amy Stein’s work is much more powerful when seen in the flesh than when reproduced on the web (her first solo exhibit in NY has just closed at Clamp Art).  As is always the case, not all images in the series manage to be quite so effective.  A bird caught in a net; a dead rabbit in a wheelbarrow; an elderly lady holding a dead bird.  These images tend towards the ordinary and don’t quite manage to pack the same punch.  But overall, this is a marvelous and highly effective series.

How is it done?  Amy’s images are all constructed tableaux vivants in the cinematographic tradition. The animals shown here are often taxidermy specimens; the human subjects are models or actors and the scenes are constructed – though based on real events. These carefully constructed scenes hover somewhere between fiction and reality – a fact that comes across subliminally in all the images and which no doubt contributes to the strength of their impact.

Because it is a personal interest, I spend a lot of time looking at imagery that focuses on animals and the human-animal relationship.  I cannot remember the last time I was struck by a set of images quite as much as I have been struck by this series.  I hope that Amy will choose to turn her considerable talents to some more of the pressing issues that we all face.  Climate change could be an interesting challenge.

Burtynsky has made it his life’s work to create images of the imprint that Man leaves on the world. Be it the wounds on the earth created by quarry sites, tire dumping grounds, mines, the oil industry, ships and containers, whatever.  He creates sets of large scale images that bring the carelessness of the human footprint into sharp relief.

But his images of litter and widespread human vandalism are starkly beautiful. Not for him the crass, factual representation of the activist photographer or photojournalist who is unsuccessfully trying to shock us into submission.  Burtynsky approaches these sites as one would approach formal landscape or architectural photography.  He gives beauty to loathsome subject matter leaving us confused.  Is this supposed to be beautiful or dreadful?

As in all successful art, it is this confusion – the subversive effect of not knowing what is real and what is contrived – the tension between beauty and ugliness – that gives his art its power.

How come we see beauty in our own litter? And what other things do we create and consume that we have come to consider beautiful or a sign of Man’s progress and achievement when maybe they are nothing more than part of the endless garbage with which we flood our own environment.

Burtynsky’s “Manufacturing” series, is nothing short of frightening. How have we become so inured to the astronomical scale of our consumption habits that we see as normal the massive scale of production portrayed in these images?

These are the questions raised by Burtynsky’s work.  I will never again look at anything simplistically held up as an example of the beauty of Man’s achievement without wondering -  “Is it all garbage?”

The background to some of her themes has been explored before but her work, evolving over a number of years, builds, layer upon layer, to create an ever more cohesive vision of where our current trajectories may lead us in the future. Concepts of a living environment that becomes increasingly hostile through desertification or rising waters are nothing new.  However, Mattingly develops her fantasy world further, having all but destroyed their surrounding environment, we see images of a nomadic people living in ‘wearable homes’ crammed with all manner of modern technology. Individuality is eroded and homogenization is the rule. Mattingly’s nomadic people look bemused. They seem surprised that the world around them has somewhow disappeared. They wear their beloved hi-technology but they have nowhere to go.

We can clearly see how this vision of the future is an almost straight line extrapolation of today’s world with its near deification of technological advance and its increasing disdain for the natural world.

Mattingly develops these future visions in extreme detail and then shows us glimpses of them through constructed photographic images, videos and drawings.  Her work becomes thoughtful and provocative when viewed as a complete body of work.

Her web site (www.marymattinglyglobal.org) is intense.  Full of a combination of dense (and occasionally abstruse) text, images, drawings, videos and external links it creates an impression of an artist deeply, almost obsessively, absorbed in the detailed creation of her world of fantasy.

As part of her detailed development of scenarios of future living, Mattingly also founded the Waterpod – “a sustainable, sculptural art and technology habitat, with four artists living on and off it, generating food, water, and power in a contained and self-sufficient environment.”

Mary Mattingly is patiently constructing detailed images of a future that, if one has the patience to persist and work through her body of work, leads us to question the wisdom of our current social, technological and environmental trajectories.