Even rail trucks full of coal look beautiful in a J Henry Fair photo

STRETCHING out throughout an in any other case unassuming nook of Norfolk, Virginia, is the Lambert’s Level coal terminal. It’s the largest and fastest-loading facility within the northern hemisphere for dealing with and transporting this fossil gas, the combustion of which is a key industrial contributor to local weather change.

This gorgeous shot, titled Trigger and Impact and capturing the dramatic scope of the yard’s operations, was taken by photographer and environmental activist J Henry Truthful from a airplane circling the power, to “look over the fence” and see what’s hidden from view, he says.

Lambert’s Level handles a staggering 48 million tonnes of coal a yr. It could actually offload the contents of 1200 rail vehicles of the stuff per day onto ships certain for the Atlantic. At its most, it may well maintain 6200 of those vans, a mere handful of which might be glimpsed right here, uniformly snaking alongside the tracks in a mesmerising show of our affect on, and destruction of, the world.

“Once I noticed this terminal, I knew it will make an excellent image,” says Truthful. “By making lovely photos of horrible issues, I hope to create a dissonance in viewers that can immediate them to contemplate the impacts of what’s proven within the photos, and query the assumptions that make these issues attainable.”

A choice of Truthful’s photographs depicting human interventions in nature and the atmosphere, together with this one, might be seen at his ongoing exhibition, Industrial Landscapes, on the ARTCO Gallery in Aachen, Germany, till 10 September.

Photographer J Henry Truthful