The Afterglow of Industry : New Zealand Photographs 2012-2022

Similar to the collapse of America’s industrial Midwest, New Zealand has also experienced the whiplash of industry vanishing. Here though, this has been complicated by much of this industry first emerging in conjunction with European colonization. Corson-Scott’s work focuses on these tensions, particularly in Te Waipounamu South Island, where the regions of the West Coast and Otago see industrial remnants contrasted with vast and complex landscapes. From these areas come images of freezing works on sacred rivers, contested mining projects, dwellings of 19 th century Chinese miners, gold processing plants still contaminated more than a century later, floods of acid mine drainage, and the demolition of factories which once built the country’s modern infrastructure. Elsewhere, on a remote sandspit is one of history’s largest whale strandings, industrial spaces are repurposed by artists, controversial hydroelectric schemes divert rivers, ancient forest remnants become tourism, and city fringe orchards are bulldozed for development.