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Bruised Lands

The Concept

Banner image: ‘Bruised Lands’ exhibition, Wasps The Briggait, Glasgow, UK, 2021

Bruised Lands brings together five unique yet interconnected bodies of work by Alan Gignoux: Oil Sands, Appalachia, Russian Rust Belt and in collaboration with Chloe Juno, Monuments and Hard Work and a Good Death.

Focusing on five locations across Canada, the United States, Russia, and Europe, the photographic series document the harvesting of natural resources, and the impact these processes are having on the surrounding environment.

Viewed in isolation, each project tells a moving tale of the realities of life in some of the most resource-rich corners of the globe. In addition to the evident environmental devastation, we see the frictions which exist between governments, corporations, and the people who live on the land.

Bruised Lands highlights the burdens that come with natural abundance, raising questions about how we balance economic demands with the growing challenges facing our environment.

‘Bruised Lands’ exhibition, Fishing Quarter Gallery, Brighton, 2019

About Bruised Lands

• Made over a ten-year period, the bodies of work in Bruised Lands reflect Gignoux’s commitment to environmental questions.

• The Bruised Lands concept was conceived by Chloe Juno of Gignouxphotos Studio and the exhibitions, photobooks and films are joint productions by members of the studio.

• Bruised Lands was first exhibited at the Fishing Quarter Gallery, Brighton (2019). It was later exhibited at Wasps the Briggait, Glasgow (November 2021) during the COP conference on climate change. Oil Sands, one of the projects included in Bruised Lands, was shown at the Noorderlicht “Taxed to the Max” Photo Festival in Groeningen, the Netherlands (2019).

• Bruised Lands is a multi-layered concept, combining a mix of visual media, including photography, photobooks, multimedia pieces and documentary films.

‘Oil Sands’ photobook on display in the Photography Galleries at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 2024

• Bruised Lands is an evolving concept. In 2022 Gignoux collaborated with photographer Chloe Juno on Monuments, a photobook documenting the destruction of communities in Germany to make way for opencast coal mining. In the making of the Russian Rust Belt photobook, Gignouxphotos collaborated with typographer Anthony Burrill.

• Over time Bruised Lands will expand to include further collaborations and new bodies of work exploring environmental questions around the world.

Photographic series included in Bruised Lands

Mountaintops to Moonscapes

Gignoux’s photographs of mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia reveal the transformation of a mountainous region of ancient forest to a barren ‘moonscape.’ The photographs are accompanied by a short documentary film, which explores the ways in which this form of mining has devastated the local community, bringing environmental degradation, job losses, economic decline, and a host of associated problems, including ill health and opioid addiction.

Read more about Mountaintops to Moonscapes

Learn more about the Mountaintops to Moonscapes photobook

See the Mountaintops to Moonscapes short film

Oil Sands

In this project photography and film are used to probe Canada’s bitumen mining development in Alberta, described by National Geographic as ‘the world’s most destructive oil operation.’ The aerial photographs by Gignoux expose a landscape reconfigured and scarred by the extraction of bitumen, while Oil Sands: Curse or Blessing – a short documentary film produced in collaboration with filmmaker Christopher Kemble – wrestles with the complexities surrounding the trade-off between a strong regional and national economy and the environment.

Monuments

A collaboration between Gignoux and photographer Chloe Juno, Monuments contemplates the lives disrupted by the insatiable hunger of surface coal mining. Communities in the path of the ever-expanding Hambacher and Garzweiler opencast mines south of Dusseldorf in Germany are being systematically evacuated from their homes and rehoused in newly constructed developments.

Hard Work and a Good Death

Hard Work and a Good Death looks at the phasing out of the coal mining industry in Lower Silesia, Poland. The industry has been the lifeblood for many Polish people who live and work alongside and within it. Using photography and personal interviews, Hard Work and A Good Death explores how the mining communities manage the transition by celebrating and preserving the historical mining culture and finding new economic opportunities. Alan Gignoux, is currently developing this work with Chloe Juno and Lucasz Folda.

Russian Rust Belt

Based on photographs from Gignoux’s residency in Yekaterinberg in 2009, Russian Rust Belt bears witness to the economic decline and shocking environmental damage that forms the backdrop to people’s lives in the Urals industrial region, Russia’s rust belt.