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Lung Liu
Abandoned
The Salton Sea, in Southern California, was once a resort destination for the rich and famous, but now it is an ecological disaster, abandoned and neglected. It is fed by agricultural runoff and the highly polluted New River. The sea’s lack of outflow results in increasing salinity and bacterial levels as well as algal blooms that kill all but the hardiest of fish. These dead fish have, in turn, severely affected the area’s massive bird population. The smell of the polution and algal blooms coupled with the dead fish and birds have significantly curtailed the area’s tourism. Resources such as fresh water that can help save the sea from further environmental damage are diverted to nearby areas such as Palm Springs. Needless to say, the future of the Salton Sea is bleak.
The purpose of this essay is meant to explore the remnants of man’s abandonment of the Salton Sea and nature’s efforts to reclaim her land. There is a beauty that lies beneath the death and decay of this desert sea’s landscape and it is my hope to convey some of the qualities that have fascinated me about this place. This region is important not only to the people that still live there, but also to the large avian population that depend on the sea. It is worth preserving.
A tightly edited version of this essay has won the International Photography Award’s Non-Professional Editorial Category in 2007 and the Environmental Category (as well as overall essay winner) of the 2008 Australian Expose Your World Competition. It is still a work in progress and will evolve over time.
Bio:
Lung Liu is a portrait and documentary photographer based in Montreal, Canada. He has won numerous awards including: IPA 2008 Non-Professional Portrait Photographer of the Year, 2008 B&W Portfolio Excellence Award Winner, 2008 Roving Eye Expose Your World Grand Prize Essay Contest Winner, IPA 2007 Non-professional Editorial Photographer of the Year, 2007 PhotoLife International First Place Category Winner, among others.
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Editor’s Note: Please only one comment per person under this essay.. Further discussions should take place under Dialogue..
Many thanks… david alan harvey
There are several interesting fine art photos here, but it quickly grows repetitious. By number 11 I was getting bored. I think this would work better as selected single images on a wall, perhaps, than as an essay.
Some really very beautiful shots in there. I always find it hard when there is such beauty in tragic situations, but maybe this is the best way to get the point across.
Great images and very pertinent thematic… The beauty of the images definitely helps to pass on the message, as Sean said.
The question of repetition will fade away as the work evolves… Really curious to see this again when it gets close to completion.
Congratulations! Keep up the good work.
Many cheers,
Armando
Lung
Congratulations for being published in Burn.
Love the photos…very interesting use/combination of b&w vis-a-vis colour and interior shots vis-a-vis outdoor/landscape shots…the feeling of abandonment is writ large on every image and that’s where (i think) you are successful with your essay!
PS: Now if Jim’s thumb’s up, can anybody differ?
Some really gorgeous shots here. Writ large on a wall is where they should live.
not sure yet about the mixing of treatments.
Do they inform me about the situation? Yes and no. Something is unbalanced slightly. The imagery seems to overwhelm the message for me.
Good work.
John
I always love to read criticisms about the minutiae of work which is clearly large; ie. mixing treatments, repetitious, etc.
I see the person in this environment responding to it and making choices. This is an artist at work. Let’s watch.
Loved the colour photographs, but I’m not so sure about the black and white pictures. The colour photographs are how I imagine the world looks in J.G. Ballard’s novel “The Drought”, and the main question the essay raises for me if are there any people living in this landscape and if so how have they survived and in what state?
I never imagined such a landscape in the real world, I really want to visit
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For me, the delicate beauty of the colour images juxtaposes interestingly with the starkness of the monochrome. I imagine it would work very well on a printed page and I am fascinated to see where this work will eventually end up.
Lung, Beautiful stunning work! I love the black and white with the color images and each photo made me say WOW! and at the same time it did not for me distract from the message. You say Wow! stunning image, I cant believe those used to be palm trees? what happened? Fine art and important environmental issue at the same time. if anything is repetitive then just edit tighter, but I think every photo stands on its own and makes a great essay as well. Bravo!
Lung,
Sometimes Desolate and careless beauty is more strong…
Thank you for very nice works.
Really nice stuff Lung. I enjoyed your works a lot. I personally have no issue with the switch between black and white and colour and agree with Jamie M-G. They both work in different ways, the b+w are a lot more powerful, but I really enjoy the subtlety of the colour too. Good stuff. Look forward to seeing more.
Lung, I follow your blog with big interest and thus it’s twice nice to see you here. Good luck!
Utterly surreal images that are hard to imagine are straight shots…but obviously they are. Whatever are we doing to this planet.
For me the mix of color and b&w works.
Patricia
I struggle with the mixing of b/w and color photos in one essay. This is a personal battle for me and I tend to choose one or the other depending on the subject at hand. It works here and doesn’t work for me as well…for many of the same reasons that it doesn’t work in my personal work. Black and white remains prominent and dominant in my mind because it is my first love with photography. Just as it took me so long to come around to digital, it took me just as long to come to love color. But color can speak volumes in situations where black and white cannot (and vice versa). And I think that both the color and the b/w shots here are amazing…and even though they are on the same subject matter, I don’t know that they necessarily work together. In the color work, I love the reflections and the fact that the sea meets the sky with no distinction. It’s even barely noticeable where the reflections start and the objects ends. Love. Love, love that, and yes surreal for that reason. I feel like the color photographs illustrates the beauty that this place holds and speaks upon its infinite potential, and the black and whites demonstrate the extent to which the devastation has occurred. Perhaps this was the point of mixing the two. If that’s the case, then I would declare it effective, although I may have placed the two in separate sections, perhaps one following the other. Anyway, I really enjoyed this as far as imagery goes, and Lung’s use of photography to try to effect change is admirable.
Thanks for the comments. In response to those regarding mixing b&w and colour…
I thought it was more worthwhile to show not only devastation, but something akin to hope at the end…if the goal is to convince someone that this place deserves attention, then I wanted to give them some sort of incentive…some idea that it is not completely hopeless. The black and white images are stark and bleak – it tends to lend itself to that kind of interpretation. The colours are less harsh – it’s softer and more vibrant. The images in the colour also should show a change in theme from man’s abandonment (in the beginning) to nature’s reclamation (in the second half).
If it is not clear now, then a better edit or simply some replacements with more appropriate images will hopefully work a little better.
I do have more images that aren’t really useful for me to include or even scan in since they’re so different from these ones (especially ones with people in them) and will need some more images to tie them all together. It seems as if I have various parts of a large jigsaw puzzle put together, but the picture in it’s entirety are in need of some key pieces to connect them all together.
Hmm…interestingly enough, these images actually aren’t shown in the order that I had set them. No wonder people are so confused! I’m not sure what happened here…I had looked at the images that I prepared and they’re labelled correctly from 001.jpg to 019.jpg…
It’s probably a lot easier to understand when shown in the right sequence.
Nice spot!
But I don’t know why I am disturbed by the digital effect (sky and white are really digital) and the too close distance with details doesn’t allowed me to a second “lecture”…
To my eyes B&W shouldn’t be used “after” just to make it more dramatic… It doesn’t change the frame and the point of view… B&W just reduce to the essential…but color, when it’s really well done, can do it also…. I usually love such mix, just to break the rules, but here sound not really usefull…and at the end quiet boring
Thank you, Oz, however, I’m a little confused by what you mean digital effect (ie sky and white)…these are film and the colours are straight scans with some colour correction while the sky has been burnt in on some of the black and whites, but otherwise, they have been untampered with. Perhaps, I’m just not understanding what you mean.
Also, what do you mean by b&w being used “after?” In the end, the success of how I convey my essay depends on how people react to it. Hopefully, I’m able to convince more people than not.
We definitely need to do something together in Detroit…the mecca of “abandoned” in the States. I’m going on another nursing assignment in Grand Rapids next week, but once I finish this (however long I can bear it) it’s time for some intensive photo work. So maybe this fall?
And one of these days I’ll hook up with y’all at the Salton Sea. I always loved these shots!
Compelling subject matter and the black and white are beautifully rendered. I see some color issues as well. Most likely through the translation of analog to digital. Some of the shadow detail shifts towards a strange blue tone. I would love to see large prints.
I look forward to seeing more from this piece.