Edward Burtynsky

Water

While trying to accommodate the growing needs of an expanding, and very thirsty civilization, we are reshaping the Earth in colossal ways. In this new and powerful role over the planet, we are also capable of engineering our own demise. We have to learn to think more long-term about the consequences of what we are doing, while we are doing it. My hope is that these pictures will stimulate a process of thinking about something essential to our survival; something we often take for granted—until it’s gone.

 

 

Lu Guang

Crying Lands

China’s rapid industrialization has provided great social and economic benefits at the cost of significant industrial pollution, which has severely impacted the environment and people’s daily lives. Heavy metals discharged without proper treatment has contaminated groundwater and farmlands threatening food safety & security and people’s health.

Rural environmental pollution & its impact on health have reached a critical stage and yet illegal industrial discharge into China’s waterways continues unchecked.

 

 

 

Lasse Bak Mejlvang

Smokey Mountain

Everyday, lorries dump tons and tons of garbage here. The locals call this place “Smokey Mountain.” We are in Manila, the capital of the Philippines: a colossal city housing over 16 million people. Smokey Mountain, a landfill, is now home for more than 5000 families. These families have all, in a most entrepreneurial fashion, constructed their homes simply by using waste material from the landfill site. In order to make ends meet, people here sort and sell whatever scattered material they find at the landfill site. In spite of the seemingly destitute living conditions, the locals at Smokey Mountain soldier on.