The Ambivalent Aesthetics of Oil: Project Documerica and the Energy Crisis in 1970s America (October 2017)
Wellum, Caleb (Author)
Environmental History
Volume: 22
Issue: 4
Pages: 723-732
Publication date: October 2017
Language: English
Edition Details: Journal section: Gallery
As energy joined the list of concerns driving the environmental movement in the 1970s, documentary photographers working for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) produced a series of images that questioned their nation’s relationship to oil. This photograph, taken by Charles O’Rear in 1975, exemplifies the ways in which these EPA photographers broke with the “technological sublime” tradition in American culture by doubting the purported benefits of oil production technologies. It imagines an offshore oil platform as a threat to the future of the body politic rather than a manifestation of national progress.
...MoreArticle Dunaway, Finis (October 2017) Gallery Editor's Note. Environmental History.
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