Thirst

Thirst is a series of four interrelated books, each of which examines the destructive legacy of industrial extraction and the plundering of natural resources in territories across the American Southwest. Great Salt Lake is the first in the series. It reveals how Great Salt Lake, the largest saltwater lake in the Western hemisphere, has been progressively exploited and polluted by the US chemical industry, depleted by agricultural and urban use, and subject to increasing periods of drought. By November 2022, the lake had reached its lowest ebb, exposing a poisonous rim of chemical dust that, carried by the wind, threatened the health of the surrounding population. In a cumulative sequence of images, Fazal Sheikh renders the lake as a diseased body of water in danger of extinction. Accompanied by a very personal essay by Terry Tempest Williams, Great Salt Lake documents its destruction and its struggle to survive. 

Forthcoming publications in the series include Oildale, Owens Lake and Arizona Copper.

Oildale focuses on the area around Bakersfield, in Southern California, and the damage caused by the Kern Oil Field, which is one of the most intensively drilled areas of the US.

Owens Lake charts the destruction of Owens Lake in central California, which was turned into a dry lake of alkali dust after the diversion of the Owens River into the Los Angeles aqueduct in 1913. Over the next decades it became the largest source of carcinogenic particulate air pollution in North America.

Arizona Copper examines the impact of copper mining on the environment and the landscape of Arizona, which produces over 60 per cent of copper in the United States.