/ Lubbock, Texas

The roaring sound of metal pumps. High-pressure water, sand, and other chemicals being blasted into the ground to create fractures that release trapped oil and gas. Independent crews drilling deep into the Permian Basin, part of the largest fracking field in the world. Hidden away, fracturing takes place thousands of feet beneath the surface in the earth’s shale rock layers. With a high-pressure water mixture, fractures created in the rock that releases the gas inside, vertically first then horizontally.

Human-made quakes are increasingly common, caused by extraction, such as mining; operations, such as damming water; explosions, such as those caused by underground nuclear tests; and introducing material into the subsurface.

Lubbock, Texas was exhibited at ‘Photon – Centre for Contemporary Photography in Ljubljana’, as part of the 'Concrete Derams II: Industrial Heritage' exhibition in July 2020, exploring the transformation of urban and rural landscapes. An exhibition that ‘aims to interrogate the role photography can play in shaping our understanding of the industrial development throughout history, which remains evident in a wide array of manifestations today; from architectural heritage, through the transformation of both urban and rural landscapes, to the local and global ecological ramifications of industrialization.’