In this publication Book and Hedén take their starting point in large-scale industrial agriculture and the use of crop-spraying and genetically modified seeds. Intensive spraying spreads so-called superweeds and superinsects over large land areas. These are resistent, extremely hardy and fast-growing species. The agricultural and chemical industries respond by using even more powerful toxins in higher doses. The result of all this is soils that cannot be used, which is in turn a serious threat to the world’s food production. The Worldwatch Institute claims that agricultural areas the size of France already lie fallow in the USA. All the pictures have been taken from the Internet and have been linked to websites with information about the issue.
These sharply defined, high-quality colour photographs, many with a high horizon line, come in a variety of formats. They all share a kind of unnaturalness that is accentuated by the intensive industrial cultivation of food-crop soils. Dry, depleted soil alternates with systematic spraying, revealing the world’s uneven distribution of natural and economic resources. The pictures range from manual production where a solitary man with a tank on his back sprays individual plants to the mechanical sweep of efficient machinery over the fields. The weeds are given the poorest treatment in the plant world, they threaten rational productivity and with their antisocial growth undermine economic principles. Book & Hedén re-use and systematize production images, and this collecting activity critiques the structure behind a model that paradoxically ends in wastage.
