Pollution was something that I thought about far more in China than I do here in Canada. A lot of that was on a simple day-to-day level – when I hacked up suspicious black things and suffered from constant eye infections. Or checking the pollution ratings each day and seeing the reports of a “blue sky day” when the pollution was so thick I would have to turn on my bike light in the middle of the day to find my way home.
On a broader level, I found that I also thought about the bigger issue so much more. What was the cost of development? Was clean-up even possible? What would happen say, 10, 20, 30 years down the line? How could the infrastructure support caring for people who would suffer from the medical effects of pollution later on?
Click here or on the picture above to see some photos of the pollution in China that… I hesitate to use a word to describe them because nothing seems to fit. Over the past week or so I keep coming back to them to flip through them again and again. They are incredible.
The photos were taken by Chinese photographer Lu Gang (卢广) who won the $30,000 W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography for his documentary project, “Pollution in China.”