The Shape of What Remains

Katie A. Holmes

 As it turns out, nearly 95% of the Earth’s surface shows some form of human modification.
—LePan, 2020
 
The reality is that the by-products of this activity are often destructive. This has prompted my project The Shape of What Remains, a series of large-scale photographic explorations into the permanent scars left behind by quarrying throughout Wales’s landscapes.
 
Quarrying has become entrenched as a vital part of Wales’s economy by supplying essential materials for infrastructure, and many sites are left abandoned and dangerously unmanaged after the extraction of materials. This is due to many quarries not putting aside enough money to cover the full costs of the restoration, often missing the estimate by millions (Haines, 2024).  As a result, these areas remain highly dangerous, posing continuous risks to local communities and even causing deaths.
 
There is often much visual pleasure in landscape photography that is actually of heavily polluted sites (a visual strategy employed to engage viewers often referred to as ‘toxic sublime’), and within these images what might seem picturesque or natural is in fact not. Engaging with this contradiction is at the heart of this work.