(Image: Dillon Marsh)
IT鈥橲 not an alien invasion or a scene from Doctor Who. For over a hundred years, the West O鈥檕kiep Mine in South Africa yielded large amounts of copper. This eerie image, created nearly half a century after it closed, represents the copper extracted throughout the mine鈥檚 lifetime 鈥� all 284,000 tonnes of it.
鈥淪outh Africa has great mineral wealth, but this has come at a cost to the environment,鈥� says photographer Dillon Marsh. 鈥淎ir and water pollution, acid mine drainage, toxic waste and abandoned, non-rehabilitated mines continue to be detrimental to the environment.鈥�
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To visualise this, Marsh photographed South African copper mines that had been mined out and abandoned, creating a series called For What It鈥檚 Worth. Using estimates of each mine鈥檚 historical output, he calculated the size of an equivalent sphere of pure copper. Marsh then used a combination of Google Earth, a 3D rendering program and Photoshop to plant each sphere at its corresponding mine, complete with accurate reflections of the surroundings on its surface.
The West O鈥檕kiep Mine was worked from 1862 until the early 1970s. 鈥淢any gold, diamond and copper mines still operate today,鈥� says Marsh. 鈥淏ut the overall production of these minerals has been in an obvious and steady decline in recent decades.鈥�
This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淔ull metal recap鈥�
