Question of Power

How photographs tell a story

In April of 2008 I made this photograph of Alice Gilmore in front of her home on the Navajo Nation near Burnham NM.  Since that time Alice has lost her home (see Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore) and now most of her grazing permit area to the BHP coal strip mine.

This past week I was asked to return to the area to document the destruction and loss of Glaash, sacred Navajo white clay.  On the way I returned to Alice's vacant house.  The mine has encroached  on the place she once called home.  Behind the house loom tailing piles hundreds of feet high.

The unending landscape once extended to the far horizon. Broken now with miles of open pit mining.

Two years ago judgement in Federal Court ordered the Federal Office of Surface Mining to stop the permitting for mining in the area.  OSM defied the judgement.

be strong, be safe, Carlan