PERTTU SAKSA

The abstract photos of the Dark Atlas series represent energy – privately manufactured gasoline sold in the countries above Nigeria, on the street, hand- to-hand, one canister and a bottle at a time. Kpayo, a gasoline distilled from stolen crude oil from major corporations, and sold on almost every street in West Africa. On the tables in these small gasoline stalls, the bottles waiting in line to be sold are encased in a mud shell in order to protect the contents from direct sunlight or the vaporization of the liquid due to the heat. As you walk by the side of the road at night, you see the flickering flame of an oil lamp glow through the precipitous ocher content of the bottles, making the gasoline bottles take on the appearance of globes, and thus providing material for the imagination, giving you a sense of uncharted realities and unnamed places. The round bottles glow in the dark of night like planets, in a tangible manifestation of an energy that is otherwise abstract and unattainable. I look at the picture of the world, and to what extent we are shaping it. I look at the picture of the ongoing environmental catastrophe and its fuels; victims and oils that feed, lubricate and prepare us for a future that is beyond our imagination.