Alan Chin: The Ocean On Fire

Flying on board a BP-contracted helicopter over the site of the sunken Deepwater Horizon drilling platform and its still out-of-control oil spill, the overwhelming sight is of the burning to try and get rid of as much of the oil as possible.

My own photographs look to me almost like the scenes of naval combat from the Second World War: Japanese kamikazes striking American aircraft carriers in the Pacific, or decimated British convoys in the North Atlantic or Mediterranean Sea.

There is no war here, of course, only years of lazy, corrupt oversight and corporate greed. If Afghanistan and Iraq have felt like endless wars, though, the BP oil spill also seems like it will never stop, as the earliest and most optimistic predictions of capping the well are long months away. Two sides of the same coin; both at home and abroad, we are living in a society of paralysis, predicted failure, and incompetence.

The ocean is on fire, and the water below poisoned.

PHOTOGRAPHS by ALAN CHIN / facingchange.org

captions– (all photos) Above the Gulf of Mexico, June 19, 2010: View of the site of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill from helicopter over-flight as oil is burned off.