Mississippi 2

The impetus for Isabelle Hayeur’s Underworlds project is rooted in her personal experience. As she states, “For over twenty years, I have lived by the shores of a river that has become very polluted. I have long been observing the transformations of this stream, the changes in its ecosystems as well as the disappearance of some of the animal species that used to live in it.” Hayeur used an underwater camera to capture images of what lay beneath the surface and discovered only aquatic deserts, waterways devoid of life: “I have observed dying ecosystems near New Jersey’s Chemical Coast and the marine cemetery of Rossville (Staten Island), where the shortage of dissolved oxygen is making life precarious. These desolate expanses are sometimes suffused in a wavering light, endowing them with a strange, disturbing beauty.”