On the Tisza
These photographs were taken along the Tisza River in Hungary in 2010 as a way to explore the site of an environmental disaster that occurred ten years before. The boats are constructed out of materials found along the Tisza, and the text is taken from interviews with people along the Tisza.
In January of 2000, the Tisza River, Hungary’s second largest river after the Danube, was contaminated by a massive quantity of cyanide and heavy metals that overflowed from a mining operation just over the border in Romania. The Tisza itself was wiped virtually clean of life—the Environmental Minister of Hungary declared it dead. It was estimated that the river would take 10 to 20 years to bounce back, (if it ever completely bounced back at all—some species may have been rendered extinct by the incident).
Ten years have passed since the incident, and I’ve often thought about this death of the river and wondered what has happened to it since. What happens when a river dies? How were people living nearby affected by it? Can it recover, and how long does it take? This project was a way for me to explore these questions photographically.
In January of 2000, the Tisza River, Hungary’s second largest river after the Danube, was contaminated by a massive quantity of cyanide and heavy metals that overflowed from a mining operation just over the border in Romania. The Tisza itself was wiped virtually clean of life—the Environmental Minister of Hungary declared it dead. It was estimated that the river would take 10 to 20 years to bounce back, (if it ever completely bounced back at all—some species may have been rendered extinct by the incident).
Ten years have passed since the incident, and I’ve often thought about this death of the river and wondered what has happened to it since. What happens when a river dies? How were people living nearby affected by it? Can it recover, and how long does it take? This project was a way for me to explore these questions photographically.
