Announcement Card for Cancer Alley – Louisiana and New York, Axis Mundi Gallery, San Diego, California
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Statement
Cancer Alley is a ninety-mile stretch of the Mississippi River in Louisiana between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. Along this waterway of industry is the highest concentration of oil refineries, chemical and petrochemical plants in the United States, accounting for tens of billions of dollars to the state’s gross product revenues. It is referred as Cancer Alley by residents of communities near these plants due to the toxic air emissions and liquid discharges, which are believed to be the cause for a disproportionate high rate of cancer cases compared with other communities in the state. Entire communities, such as Good Hope and Sunrise, have either been relocated or bought-out by the neighboring company.
In 1792, some twenty merchants began to meet daily at wooden tables set-up under a buttonwood tree in Lower Manhattan, New York to trade U.S. bonds that had been sold to fund the Revolutionary War. Within a few years, the New York Stock Exchange was founded and the beginning of the concrete canyons that make up the financial center of the world. Today, there are nearly 3,000 companies listed on the Exchange with stock brokers trading nearly 314 billion shares valued at over $16 trillion dollars on a daily basis. No longer under a tree, it costs brokerage firms close to $2.5 million dollars annually to have the opportunity to trade.
Cancer Alley – Louisiana and New York is a sad and tragic reflection on our desire for financial comfort and success at the expense of personal and environmental well-being. The photographs reveal the relationship between the industrial landscape of Louisiana, where beauty and devastation collide along the Mississippi River and chain-smoking businessmen on Wall Street, where one would expect the rewards of success to reflect the good life.
Number of Works | Sizes: 24 pigment prints, 12 x 16 and 16 x 12 inches | 3 text pieces (optional), 11 x 14 inches
Frame Sizes: 17 x 21 and 21 x 17 x 1 1/4 inches – prints | 11 7/8 x 14 7/8 x 1 1/4 inches – text
Space Requirement: Approximately 70 linear feet (minimum)
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