J Henry Fair

Aerial photographer and environmentalist, J Henry Fair confronts issues of pollution, patriotism, and environmental destruction through his art by depicting environmental devastation across the globe. Best known for his series Industrial Scars: The Hidden Costs of Consumption (2006 -), Fair portrays images of environmental destruction wrought by human intervention such as fracking, coal, steel, and aluminum mining, farming, and the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill. By capturing these images from an aerial perspective, Fair walks the line between aesthetic documentary photography and a more painterly abstraction of his subjects where vivid color supersedes the content of the image. While Fair’s primary objective is to create aesthetic images, his secondary goal is to raise people’s awareness of the correlations between consumerism, patriotism, and environmental ruin.