Introduction
Wind examines and documents the ever-expanding infrastructure for producing wind energy in the United States and Europe. A dramatic surge in the construction of massive wind farms, small commercial applications, and emerging residential use of energy generating wind turbines, is creating changes in the landscape in profound ways. While flying into Copenhagen, I was struck by the beauty of the turbines spinning in the Baltic Sea between Denmark and Sweden.
Although America and Europe are both installing new turbines in massive numbers, the political climate in which they come to exist is vastly different. Europe has integrated wind energy almost seamlessly into their infrastructure with minimal friction. In Denmark, people fish off the jetty directly under the large turbines, seemingly unaware of their presence. In America, the very notion of climate change is met with skepticism if not flatly denied by half of the political spectrum and people fall ill with the psychosomatic disease Wind Turbine Syndrome.
In the years since the watershed 1975 exhibition The New Topographics, landscape photography has shifted from the representation of beauty and the natural world to a focused scrutiny of the hand of man on the environment. Most of this examination is done through a negative lens. These images set out to investigate our shaping of the landscape with positive intentions.
Whether viewing the high-density installations engaging the landscape like gigantic sculptural interventions, or the smaller commercial and residential fixtures that speak of practicality and environmental concerns, the large numbers of turbines inevitably ask us to re-address our visual experience of the landscape. These dramatic symbols of renewable resources and green technology vividly evidence the hand of man on the landscape in a way not seen since the massive post World War II infrastructure development in America and rebuilding of post war Europe.
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