Coincidences & landscape

Wow, isn't it strange how things happen.
Yesterday in the car on the way back from Perth I was having a conversation with Dave (he'd just come back from a surveying job in Newman, yes we contrast a bit on sustainability here!), about how mining so radically alters the landscape. How we dig up and totally alter the surface of the earth. Concreting over the earth to create cities is also pretty major but I think for me mining seems even more shocking as we are changing natural erosive processes which have taken millions of years and the material taken out is not going back. We are manufacturing (and quickly) a new altered landscape.
Here's where the coincidence come in..... Today in my inbox i got a news letter from the Green Pages magazine and one of the articles was about photographer Edward Burtynsky. His picutres are about exactly this subject, how industry transforms nature and landscape. Here's what they are about in his own words:
Nature transformed through industry is a predominant theme in my work. I set course to intersect with a contemporary view of the great ages of man; from stone, to minerals, oil, transportation, silicon, and so on. To make these ideas visible I search for subjects that are rich in detail and scale yet open in their meaning. Recycling yards, mine tailings, quarries and refineries are all places that are outside of our normal experience, yet we partake of their output on a daily basis.

These images are meant as metaphors to the dilemma of our modern existence; they search for a dialogue between attraction and repulsion, seduction and fear. We are drawn by desire - a chance at good living, yet we are consciously or unconsciously aware that the world is suffering for our success. Our dependence on nature to provide the materials for our consumption and our concern for the health of our planet sets us into an uneasy contradiction. For me, these images function as reflecting pools of our times.

Edward Burtynsky

Here are a couple of examples of his pictures from Australia. They're taken from his website.


These pictures are of kalgoorlie and Lake Lefroy in Western Australia.

If you were doing a geography module on consumption these would be great pictures to use as 'Landscapes of Consumption' to compare with the end Shopping Mall 'Lanscape of Consumtption' that we would more often think of. They show quite shockingly the direct affect our consumer choices have on landscapes (i was going to say our landscapes but are they really ours to do this with, often they are other peoples' and always the plants and animals which would have lived here before this).

EDIT
Richard was just saying imagine how the water table and everything is affected all around, probably not just the mine itself but the ecosystems surrounding it for miles will also be changed by it.