Ever since I took my first orienteering class in college, I’ve been intrigued by maps. I’ve done a few sketches using maps in some drawings, but nothing has yet borne fruit for me. A few days ago, I showed you some beautiful textile works by Leah Evans that are inspired by maps. I’ve also mentioned some ideas I’ve had as I’ve flown over Utah deserts on my way to Los Angeles from Colorado. There are some beautiful, if disturbing, aerial images of strip mines in Nevada in an earlier post.
Once again, I’ve come across some amazing aerial landscape photos; these are by Alexander Heilner. His website doesn’t go into detail on the thinking or story behind this series, so I’ll just show them to you here. They appear to be images of some kind of evaporation pools, perhaps from mining operations. These photographs create a kind of paradox, because it’s intuitively obvious that these places must be vats of poison, and yet the images are so alluring. The contradiction makes my heart ache.
