This photo was taken at an abandoned and “remediated” dolomite mine near Labrador City, Labrador. Dolomite is often used as a decorative stone, a concrete aggregate, and as a source of magnesium. I created this image as a part of a larger project about friendship and leisure in a region that is ruled by industrial labour and mineral extraction. Despite efforts to remediate, mineral extraction creates scars on the earth’s surface that can never truly be repaired.

This specific version of the photograph, with its magenta tones, was created as a commission for Eastern Edge gallery and hung in the Avalon Mall for Come Home Year 2022. The digital alteration of the original colours was an aesthetic choice meant to mimic Kodak’s discontinued Aerochrome film stock, a type of infrared film created for military surveillance purposes.

Through digital manipulation, a seemingly natural landscape is transformed into an extra-terrestrial one, reminding us of its past as an industrial wasteland and, despite our best efforts, its stunted, remediated future.