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’.
Those slurries are from the processing, not mining. Same with tailings, they are what is left over after extraction.
Mines pollute. But in completely irrelevant amounts compared to the whole rest of the chain.
This is an artists impression from someone who did not study the topic. It fails to show what it set out to show. It is that simple.