Photo Series Category

The desire to build a dam across the Yangtze River 610 feet high and 1.3 miles long - creating a reservoir 50 miles longer than Lake Michigan in a densely populated area struck me as an example of how flaws in our perceptual system can cause immeasurable harm. The largest concrete object on the planet will ultimately force more than 4 million people to vacate their ancestral homes, as of 2009, and disrupt the lives of the 30 million people living in the reservoir region. There are 1,600 factories and manufacturing facilities in the reservoir area. Many of them have been burying toxic materials for the past 50 years. Scientists fear that lead, mercury, arsenic and dozens of other poisons, including radioactive waste, will leach out into the reservoir destroying aquatic life. At the present time only 20 percent of the residential and industrial waste entering the Yangtze River system is treated. This photo essay represents a story about one individual’s experience traveling the 400 miles of the Yangtze River valley in 1999, documenting the way life was before the reservoir buried 13 cities, 140 towns and 1,342 villages. There was the distinct feeling of living in a Russian existential novel - watching people go about their daily routines all the while knowing that soon their lives will be forever changed as they are forced into an uncertain future.