‘Beautiful Destruction’ artist/photographer Louis Helbig’s aerial photos of oil/tar sands

RCI’s Wojtek Gwiazda spoke to Louis Helbig about the book, and the decision six years ago to start this photo project.

Tuesday, September 9, 2014

For the past six years photographer and artist Louis Helbig has been photographing one of the world’s most controversial and largest industrial projects on earth, the oil/tar sands mining operation in the western Canadian province of Alberta.

Shot from his airplane, the photographs not only document the vastness of the operations, but sometimes almost seem abstract , as in his photo “Rainbow Lava”.

After a number of exhibitions of the photographs, Helbig is now about to publish 200 of these photos, along with articles by supporters and opponents of the bitumen sands project in a book called “Beautiful Destruction”.

Link to story (26 minute interview) http://www.rcinet.ca/en/2014/09/09/beautiful-destruction-artistphotographer-louis-helbig-aerial-photos-of-oiltar-sands/