My father was a company man living in the small company town of Pittsfield, Massachusetts. He became terminally ill at the age of twenty-six and died when he was thirty-nine. After his death, at the age of seventeen, I left home and returned to photograph when I was forty-nine. In revisiting my hometown, I looked for a tangible connection to the man I never knew as an adult. The images in Two-Million-Volts to the Heart form a link with the past by exposing the cancerous landscape of my childhood, which has deeply affected us both.
For long ago, General Electric (GE) abandoned Pittsfield, one of their eighty-six national polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB) Superfund sites. Throughout seventy years of illegal corporate dumping, GE donated contaminated soil to the town as a landfill. GE’s illegal corporate dumping still makes itself known, as PCBs continue to bubble up in basements, playgrounds, schools, rivers, and lakes.
General Electric's Contamination of Silver Lake, Pittsfield MA, Pigmented Ink Print, 23” x 34”, 2014
Child’s Playhouse, Silver Lake, Pittsfield, MA, Pigmented Ink Print, 23” x 34”, 2014
Closed Road Due to Polychlorinated Biphenyl (PCB) Contaminated Soil, Pittsfield, MA, Pigmented Ink Print, 23” x 34”, 2014
No Entry, Contamination Site, Pittsfield, MA, Pigmented Ink Print, 23” x 34”, 2014
Housatonic River Contamination Site, Pittsfield, MA, Pigmented Ink Print, 23” x 34”, 2014
Abandoned General Electric Ordnance Facility, Pittsfield, MA, Pigmented Ink Print, 23” x 34”, 2014
No Trespassing, Contamination Site, Pittsfield, MA, Pigmented Ink Print, 23” x 34”, 2014
Polychlorinated Biphenyl (PCB) Detection Devices, Pigmented Ink Print, 23” x 34”, 2014
Polychlorinated Biphenyl (PCB) Contamination Storage Facility, Hill 76, Pittsfield, MA, Pigmented Ink Print, 23” x 34”, 2014
General Electric's Polychlorinated Biphenyl (PCB) Contamination of Allendale Elementary School, Pittsfield, MA, Pigmented Ink Print, 23” x 34”, 2014
Abandoned General Electric Ordnance Facility, Pittsfield, MA, Pigmented Ink Print, 23” x 34”, 2014
GE Ordinance Closed Gate, Pittsfield, MA, Pigmented Ink Print, 23” x 34”, 2014
The Corner of Plastics Ave and Private Way, Pittsfield, MA, Pigmented Ink Print, 23” x 34”, 2014
Baseball Field Contamination Site, Pittsfield, MA, Pigmented Ink Print, 23” x 34”, 2014
Polychlorinated Biphenyl (PCB) Contamination Storage Facility, Hill 76, Pittsfield, MA, Pigmented Ink Print, 23” x 34”, 2014
General Electric Facility, Pittsfield MA, Pigmented Ink Print, 23” x 34”, 2014
Timeline of GE's integration into Pittsfield, MA, as seen through postcards from 1904 to 1979, size variable
Timeline of GE's integration into Pittsfield, MA, as seen through postcards from 1904 to 1979, size variable
End of the Road at Contamination Storage Facility at Hill 71, Pittsfield, MA, Pigmented Ink Print, 23” x 34”, 2014
Contamination Site, Pittsfield MA, Pigmented Ink Print, 23” x 34”, 2014
General Electric's Contamination of Silver Lake, Pittsfield, MA, Pigmented Ink Print, 23” x 34”, 2014
