Soviet Pollution, Gerd Ludwig

Bleak and depressing, harsh and foreboding, Ludwig’s photo perfectly captures the nugatory nature of human lives against the seeming necessity of industry. The people sit and stand insignificantly against the vast chimneys that billow careless and dominant fumes. A sea of white, a sky of white— nature against man; man against man. The trees attempt to obstruct the truth, grey and weak — they’re a perfect insight. Change the background, what would we see? We’d see children playing innocently, men fishing mindlessly, a perfect winter’s day in a blissful haze. The background appears artificial, cartoonish in its lunacy, exists to create yet it destroys: the perfect antithesis of the foreground.

How can human creations outnumber humans? How can blue skies be permanently grey? These a mere few of the questions such images provoke, but perhaps the most thought-provoking question is, how can this photo exist? Few images have the ability to enable someone to question their behaviour or ignorance; this one does. The photo is both sobering and distressing yet it is only one photo, of one industrial plant, in one country, by one man.