Alan Gignoux - Bruised Lands Photography Talk

BRUISED LANDS

Bruised Lands brings together five unique, yet interconnected bodies of work, created over twelve years by documentary photographer and filmmaker Alan Gignoux in collaboration with the team at Gignoux Photos: Appalachia: Mountaintops to Moonscapes, Monuments, Oil Sands, Russian Rust Belt, and The Powers That Be.

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.

In the series Mountaintops to Moonscapes, Gignoux’s photographs of mountain-top removal mining in Appalachia reveal the transformation of a mountainous region of ancient forest to a barren ‘moonscape.’ The photographs are accompanied by a short documentary film, which explores the ways in which this new form of mining has devastated the local community, bringing environmental degradation, job losses, economic decline, and a host of associated problems, including ill health and opioid addiction.

Oil Sands uses photography and film to probe Canada’s bitumen mining development in Alberta, described by National Geographic as ‘the world’s most destructive oil operation.’ The aerial photographs by Gignoux expose a landscape reconfigured and scarred by the extraction of bitumen, while Oil Sands: Curse or Blessing - a short documentary film produced in collaboration with filmmaker Christopher Kemble - wrestles with the complexities surrounding the trade-off between a strong regional economy and the environment.

Monuments, a collaboration between Gignoux and photographer Chloe Juno, contemplates the lives disrupted by the insatiable hunger of surface coal mining. Communities in the path of the ever-expanding Hambacher and Garzweiler opencast mines south of Dusseldorf in Germany are being systematically evacuated from their homes and rehoused in newly constructed developments.

Gignoux’s photography series Russian Rust Belt bears witness to the economic decline and shocking environmental damage that forms the backdrop to people’s lives in the Urals industrial region, Russia’s rust belt.

The Powers That Be combines Polaroids of campaign posters taken during the 2024 Polish elections with landscapes from the coal mining regions in Poland to highlight the role of elected representatives in reducing the world’s dependence on fossil fuels.

Bruised Lands originated as a touring exhibition featuring photography and documentary film by Alan Gignoux. It has been exhibited at the Fishing Quarter Gallery (Brighton) and at Wasps the Briggait (Glasgow) during the COP 26 conference on climate change. Bruised Lands was also published as a photography feature in award-winning sustainability publication Revolve’s Winter 2021 issue.

Bruised Lands is continuously developing as a concept and will over time incorporate new work addressing environmental issues. Bruised Lands is also increasingly becoming a collaborative endeavour, involving contributions from other creatives in the Gignouxphotos studio.

To date, Gignouxphotos has published four titles under the Bruised Lands theme: Mountaintops to Moonscapes, Oil Sands, Monuments, and Russian Rustbelt. We are planning to launch our latest title, The Powers That Be, in November at Offprint Paris during Paris Photo.

To avoid the catastrophic effects of global warming, all nations will need to work towards a low carbon future by drastically reducing their dependence on fossil fuels and protecting and restoring nature on an unprecedented scale. The window within which we have the possibility of averting climate disaster is closing and we are at a critical moment on which the future of the planet depends.

Bruised Lands lays bare the challenges ahead. In the words of interviewee Mike Hudema at Greenpeace in Canada: ‘The stakes could not be higher in this battle.’


ABOUT ALAN GIGNOUX and GIGNOUXPHOTOS

Alan Gignoux is an award-winning documentary photographer and filmmaker. He specialises in long form documentary projects that explore an issue and its impact on communities over a long period of time, sometimes several years.
He is the founder of Gignouxphotos, which produces documentary projects focussing on socio-political and environmental issues around the world. Gignouxphotos combines photography, video, interviews, research, and writing in creative and innovative ways to create layered projects offering multiple perspectives. Combining the skills of a team of freelance arts specialists, Gignouxphotos operates as a studio, producing exhibitions, photographer’s books, newspapers and zines, exhibitions, and documentaries.