When we mine the land for precious minerals, what do we gain, and what do we lose?
These giant balls of metal each represent an exact amount of material: the volumes produced by various mines in South Africa.
Artist and photographer Dillon Marsh wanted to visualise the value that humans have taken from the Earth, and its impact.
He added digital balls of material to these photos of scarred landscapes to illustrate what was gained, and what was lost.
The series is called: ‘For what it’s worth’.
I like the general idea here but, without something to compare with for scale, the pictures are just completely meaningless.
The ones that are on flat or raised land I’m not sure how to interpret, but I assume the ones with a pit would originally have been filled in. Even if I took the density of each material to calculate it’s dimensions in the picture most of them are still kinda hard to wrap my head around.
aren’t those placed in the ancient mines? like the diamonds are in the digged rocks where they mined it no?
There are bananas in there for scale.