Yellow Water
One year after the Gold King Mine Spill, in August 2016, I embarked on a road trip from Silverton, Colorado to Shiprock, New Mexico in order to retrace the path of toxic yellow water. The 2015 spill had discharged more than three million gallons of acidic mine waste fluid into Cement Creek before joining the Animas River and eventually into the San Juan River which flows directly across the Navajo Nation. Through my photographic journey, I make explicit the enduring presence of toxicity across multiple landscapes and territories. Sometimes it appears beautiful, other times haunting. The selection of images that follow highlight the relationships that various communities sustain through water/tó despite the occurrence of repeated and enduring contamination from upstream locales. The Gold King Mine Spill shows us this, even in that, which cannot be readily seen.
++++
See Yellow Water photo essay here
Yellow Water was featured in Spill exhibition at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery at the University of British Columbia in 2019