Sulfur in Silence

One afternoon in 2020, I was scrolling Instagram searching for locations within driving distance in the Mojave desert when I stumbled across an image of two influencers floating in a turquoise waterway. The landscape looked like a radioactive canal dug out of a lunar landscape, but was, in fact, the still active National Chloride Company brine evaporation ponds. Despite the scorching summer temperatures, I drove out to shoot the location the next day. I found the stark contrast between the sparkling crystal-encrusted pools and the arid earth mesmerizing.

I began researching additional surreal man-made landscapes and realised that there was a virtually endless number of sites around the world that were equally fascinating and terrifying, most far from urban infrastructure or hidden from view at the ground level. Through satellite imagery, some of these sites resembled elaborate architectural formations while others featured brightly coloured, yet often toxic, bodies of water. I was shocked that the earth was pocked with so many extreme scars, many of which looked other-worldly.

I was simultaneously horrified by the damage we’ve inflicted on our habitat, and impressed by what humans are capable of. These newfound locations revived my childhood imagination and sense of wonder. As I investigated countless extraction sites, I realized that although some of these places are eventually restored and revegetated or converted into lakes, many locations are left as abandoned toxic spaces. What will future civilizations think of these monumental scars we left behind?

As I continued researching, I discovered dozens of extraction sites, from open pit mines to tailings ponds and mountains of mining waste. I decided to create a long-term project on this topic titled “Supernatural.” For the last 3 1/2 years I’ve been travelling the globe, documenting and staging photos at the most surreal extraction sites I can access.

Nineteenth-century Romantic paintings depicted the sublime as awe-inspiring and exhilarating landscapes, often from a male perspective and including a lone man, prominently placed, suggesting his mastery over nature. The "Supernatural" project captures the female form in the extreme places I find. Each photograph acts as a record of these unique, on-site creations, capturing classic scenes from a woman's perspective, and challenging the masculine notion of the seen in famous 19th-century Romantic paintings.

"Ijen Effigy" (left) and "Ijen Venus" (right) were produced overlooking the active sulphur mine at Mount Ijen volcano in East Java.

Below at the edge of the caldera, independent miners have installed a generator and harnessed the volcano’s heat to extract sulphur from the condensation. The cloud to the left of my figure is sulphuric fog rising from pipes that precipitate elemental sulphur in the mine. The community of miners who work here transport up to 100 kilos of sulphur on their shoulders every day despite the acidic fog. I was inspired by the sulphur figurines some of the miners make in their free time to sell to trekkers and decided to use a yellow costume for the shoot. For three days, I camped at the base of the volcano and made the 2-hour trek up the mountain before sunrise. The pose of the Venus intentionally mimics armless relics of classical sculpture.

How was I unaware that this place existed, and are there others like it? I had always thought of the ‘sublime’ landscapes as something conventional, cliche: majestic mountains, stormy seas and rugged coastlines. My discovery of these radical spaces gave the term ‘sublime’ a whole new meaning, something more bizarre.

I have been awarded grants from the Berlin Senate of Culture and the Goethe Institut, and I recently returned from shooting at the sulfur mines at Mount Ijen and an active limestone mine in East Java. In 2024, I will start an artist’s residency on the high arctic island of Svalbard and will travel to London where this work will be exhibited as part of Earth Photo 2024.

Can you imagine future archaeologists piecing together fantastical narratives from the scars we leave on the landscape?