“Ivanpah Thermal Solar Plant, CA. Study #32” by David Gardner
David Gardner was the only photographer who tried to use photography in a social context, and created technically excellent images that show provoking environmental themes in landscape form. His photographer’s statement was very clear and enlightening about his intention, and placed each image in its social context. Because they are all part of a project it’s difficult to single out any one of them, but I would choose Ivanpah Solar Plant as the most ambitious and arresting image. Others included Asarco Pit Mine, Oildale and Harvest Time.
Photography of environmental crisis often relies on images that show destruction and damage in shocking terms. Gardner’s imges, by contrast, are almost peaceful, with saturated colors and a deceptive stillness in composition. They require the viewer to spend more time in examining them. But he combines each image with an accompanying text that ranges from history to an account of how he took it. Together, the combination is powerful.
Like many of the others, his winning photograph of the enormous Ivanpah Solar Plant compresses a huge landscape into an image that feels almost claustrophobic, that is almost abstract, a photograph of the future. The text accompanying it states the purpose of all of them: “the starting point for this body of work that explores vast man-altered landscapes … formerly untouched natural landscapes and ecosystems will continue to be disturbed or destroyed.”
~ David Bacon