The Exposure Project: Johan Bergström's Smoke Signals

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Johan Bergström's Smoke Signals

Last week, Swedish photographer Johan Bergström e-mailed with some new work from his ongoing series Smoke Signals, a project which examines the displacement of villagers at the hand of aggressive mining practices in the German countryside. In the statement for the work, Bergström elaborates:

"In the Lausitz region of eastern Germany machines are digging their way trough the landscape in search of lignite, the dirtiest combustible on the planet in terms of emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. These immense open cast mines are rapidly expanding and forces villagers to leave their homes. But the destruction of landscape and extrusion of villagers has a long history. Thousands of Brandenburg residents have lost their homes since mining began in 1924. A total of 136 villages have been destroyed to make way for the mines, displacing at least 30,000 people."