Bruised Lands brings together four unique, yet interconnected photography series, created over the last ten years. Oil Sands, Monuments, Mountain-tops to Moonscapes, and Russian Rust Belt. Bruised Lands documents the relentless harvesting of natural assets and is a graphic and timely testament to the serious impact that industrial processes are having on the global environmental crisis.

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My aerial photographs of the Oil Sands in Alberta, Canada, depict a landscape reconfigured and scarred by the extraction of bitumen. Monuments contemplate the lives affected by the insatiable hunger of surface coal mining in Germany. Communities in the path of the ever-expanding Garzweiler surface mine are being systematically evacuated from their homes and rehoused in newly constructed developments.

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My photographs of mountain-top removal mining in Appalachia reveal the transformation of a mountainous region of ancient forest to an other-worldly landscape which many have described as a “moonscape.” For Russian Rust Belt, I travelled extensively in the minerals-rich Ural industrial region of Russia, documenting several historically significant “monocities” built around mining and metallurgy.

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My photographs bear witness to the visible environmental damage that forms the backdrop to people’s lives. My work includes interviews with stakeholders across the divide, investigating the tension between communities traditionally sustained by fossil fuels and metals extraction and the dire consequences for the environment through the pollution of air, soil and water, and the release of carbon emissions. In the words of interviewee Mike Hudema at Greenpeace in Canada: “The stakes could not be higher in this battle.”

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About
Gignoux is an award-winning documentary photographer and founder of Gignoux Photos, producing documentary photography projects focussing on socio-political and environmental issues around the world. Gignoux specializes in long-form documentary projects that explore an issue and its impact on communities over long periods of several years, combining photography, video, interviews, research, and writing in creative and innovative ways to create layered projects offering multiple perspectives. Gignoux began his career as a stringer working for media agencies in South Africa, where an amateur interest in photography led to a degree at the London College of Printing. He worked on commissions for NGOs such as CARE and OXFAM before embarking on his own documentary projects. Gignoux’s photographs, photobooks and documentary short films have been included in exhibitions and festivals all over the world.

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