Conflicted Relationships

When a team of scientists from the Anthropocene Working Group sought to find the so-called “golden spike" of the Anthropocene (the point on a stratigraphic section that marks the beginning of the Anthropocene in geologic time), their search led them to Crawford Lake, a small but deep lake near Milton, Ontario. The basin’s rare physical traits, in particular its depth to surface area ratio, stop the top and bottom layer from mixing and make it an ideal candidate for study. Every year, two new layers of sediment form at the bottom of Crawford Lake and remain undisturbed due to the lack of mixing in the water. By taking a core sample from this well-preserved environment, scientists could examine the and determine the starting point of the Anthropocene as an epoch of geological time marked by massive increases in human population and carbon dioxide emissions.

Photographer Garth Lenz tracks and documents the Anthropocene through his award-winning images of natural and industrial landscapes. Through Lenz’s careful eye, viewers are frequently transported to sites that unmistakably bear the deep scars of human contact. From deforestation in Yucatan due to high-end tourism to copper mining in Bingham Canyon, Utah and the Alberta Tar Sands, Lenz’s images speak to the irreversible social and ecological impacts of extractive industries.

The image Humanity’s Biggest Hole takes as its subject Bingham Canyon, the world’s largest open pit copper mine. In Lenz’s photographs, an enormous, craterous mine occupies the foreground while, in the background, a mountain range lit by the morning sun and dressed in the autumnal reds and yellows of trees contrast a bright blue sky. Massive, intricate mining roads snake around the excavation sites while the canyon in the distance provides counterpoint and relief. The scene, as with so many of Lenz’s images of industrial landscapes, is eerie yet bewitching.

Like many photographers capturing environmental degradation and destruction, Lenz has had to contend with some critics who have suggested that his images, potentially de-emphasize the severity of the destruction through their vibrancy and beauty. In response, Lenz notes the ways in which beauty often serves as an invitation for closer interrogation of the image, its subject, and of self.

Recalling one of his favourite images, a tailings pond with a reflection of blue sky and white clouds, which, upon closer inspection, reveals a bitumen swirl going through it, Lenz says “I feel like those kinds of images more accurately reflect the kind of conflicted relationship that we have with massively extractive projects…Most of us decry that devastation and the impacts, but at the same time, we enjoy the benefits that those resources provide.”

Lenz also notes the ways in which the systems we rely upon often constrain our agency.

“We’re virtually forced, because of the infrastructure that’s been created, to become unwitting participants in creating consumer products whose devastation and social injustice we lament.”

Much like the image of the tailings pond, Humanity’s Biggest Hole invites viewers to not only contemplate the environmental legacies of the mine such as its contamination of local aquifers but also, looking forward, its long-term implications vis-a-vis Ontario’s growing dependency on copper-reliant electrical systems. 

In his quest to capture our changing landscapes, Lenz stresses the importance of documenting environmental destruction in an era of heightened disinformation and media distrust.

According to the Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2023, between 2016 and 2023 trust in the news in Canada (that is, people who trust most of the news, most of the time) has decreased from 55 percent to 40 percent of Canadians.

With trust in media declining and alongside attitudes towards publicly funded news services, Lenz believes that images of industrial landscapes are vital testimonials.

“You can drive for hundreds of miles along a roadway and not realize that behind the fringe of trees lies a massive clear cut or a massive mine. You really need to get into the air to see what it is,” Lenz adds. “I think that in this age of disinformation and distrust, showing something on that kind of scale is, in a way, harder to refute.”

For decades, Garth Lenz has mobilized his immense creativity and skill in service of bringing attention to natural and industrial landscapes. His images compel viewers to grapple with beauty, destruction, infrastructure, and complicity and serve as important documentary sources. They chronicle immense social and ecological displacement and devastation in the Anthropocene and ask viewers to reflect on the bitumen swirl corrupting a reflection or an open pit mine foregrounding a picturesque panorama. When the language of tailing ponds normalizes and naturalizes blight, Lenz reminds us that language–both visual and textual–matters.

Follow more of Garth Lenz's work online at www.garthlenz.com and on Facebook and Instagram @garth.lenz.

Phillip Dwight Morgan is a Toronto-based journalist, poet, and researcher. His essays, op-eds, and interviews have been featured on macleans.ca, cbc.ca, rabble.ca and in Briarpatch and Spacing magazines.