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 fuel, 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 Honest 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 will probably offload the contents of 1200 rail vehicles of the stuff per day onto ships certain for the Atlantic. At its most, it could actually maintain 6200 of those vehicles, a mere handful of which could 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 could make an awesome image,” says Honest. “By making stunning pictures of horrible issues, I hope to create a dissonance in viewers that can immediate them to think about the impacts of what’s proven within the footage, and query the assumptions that make these issues doable.”

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

Photographer J Henry Fair