We see “landscape” wherever we look. When we think of landscape as the subject of art, we conjure sylvan tableaux (think Claude Monet or Ansel Adams). When we think of industrial landscape, the words grate; they fit together uncomfortably and we imagine rusting architectural hulks marring vast barren, toxic urban vistas.

The engineered world, extractive industry, oil wells, fracking and open pit mines–these are more germane to us now than the frail delicacy of a New Mexico moonrise or the ephemeral vail of a Sierra cascade in free fall framed by noble (endangered) three-century-old fur. Beauty in nature resides everywhere–and human nature has a hand in creating much of what we relish in the world.

The rub for me is this; some of the most compelling, complex and stunning places in the world are the ones most ravaged–by industry, war, time, the normal calamity that we bring by simply living here.

The photographs from the series UnEarth honor the complexity of this conundrum.

                                                                                             –Martin Stupich