In January 2023, climate scientists from Utah’s Brigham Young University warned that the Great Salt Lake could disappear within the next five years. David Maisel has been working in the vicinity of the lake for more than 35 years, originally drawn there by the Kennecott Copper Mine and Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty; this exhibition is his latest chapter in tracing an environmental crisis unfolding before our eyes in real time. Few lakes rival Utah’s Great Salt Lake in size and significance — it is the largest saline lake in the United States and the eighth largest in the world. However, drought conditions caused by climate change and industrial development have caused the lake to decrease in size by more than two-thirds in the past forty years. The surface area of the Lake has declined from 3,330 square miles in 1980 to a record-low 950 square miles in 2021. A terminal lake, meaning it has no natural outlets, over time it has become a repository of arsenic, dioxins, mercury, PCBs, and other toxins from the mining industry as well as from agricultural runoff. As more of the lakebed becomes exposed due to the lake’s depletion, the surrounding atmosphere has become increasingly poisoned by toxic airborne dust emanating from the playa. This threat directly impacts the 1.2 million residents of Salt Lake City and more than a million others living in the greater metropolitan area, as well as some ten million migratory birds that rely on the Great Salt Lake.

Across the four decades of my photographic practice, I have pursued themes surrounding the development and destruction of the environment, particularly in the American West. Through my aerial photography documenting sites of industry, urbanization, military land use, clearcutting of forests, water reclamation projects, and natural resource extraction, I have chronicled the consequences of our transformation of the earth. As we move further into the twenty-first century, my work has come to address issues related to climate change and the shape of our future.My horizonless images are made from a steeply banking aircraft, using a handheld medium format camera, the resulting pictures encompassing documentary and aesthetic perspectives in equal measure. With this multi-chaptered work, I’m seeking to expand and redefine our understanding of the landscape and landscape art to include the defiled, the ruined, the chaotic, and the toxic realms of our own making. —David Maisel

For information on hosting Spiraling, please contact exhibitions@barrylopezfoundation.org