By weaving together satellite images generated by Google Earth, the artist and photographer Mishka Henner has created a stunning visualisation of humanity’s impact on the natural world.
Through his aerial shots of oil fields, cattle feedlots and wind turbines, Henner captures with forensic clarity the physical effects of humans’ obsession with maximising production and yield.
Feedlots
Almost all the beef consumed in the US will have been ‘finished’ on a feedlot: a vast empire of pens and troughs where up to 100,000 steers at a time spend the last three to six months of their lives gaining up to 4 pounds a day on a diet of corn, protein supplements and antibiotics.
Everything on these farms is designed to maximise the meat yield; from the mixture in each cattle's feed to the size of run-off channels carrying the animals' waste into giant lagoons.
Oil field
In certain parts of the US, the country's unquenchable thirst for oil has altered the landscape beyond recognition.
Natural features are supplanted by man-made marks and structures reflecting the complex infrastructural logic of oil exploration, extraction and distribution.
Resembling the bold brush strokes of abstract expressionists, these marks are produced by the hand of an industry striving to satisfy a national and international compulsion.
Wind turbines
Wind turbines are a relatively new feature of the American landscape, but their rapid expansion across the country has proved controversial with rural communities. For all its faults, the wind turbine is, for Henner, the pinnacle of design engineering that harnesses an invisible but constant resource.
