Jane Fulton Alt's Crude Awakenings

By Marcus Gilmer in Arts & Entertainment on Jun 22, 2010 9:00PM

Chicago-based photographer Jane Fulton Alt has had a love affair with New Orleans, one we discussed with her last year as her Hurricane Katrina-related "After The Storm" exhibit showed at the Chicago Cultural Center (many of the photos from which you can see in her collection Look and Leave). In the wake of the recent Gulf of Mexico oil spill gush, she's returned to the (now literally) Dirty Coast for inspiration for her latest project, Crude Awakening. Of the inspiration for the project, she says:

Living on the shores of Lake Michigan, I am acutely aware of the disastrous toll the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has taken on all forms of life, especially as our beaches opened to the 2010 swimming season. This environmental, social and economic catastrophe highlights a much larger problem that has impacted untold suffering as we exploit the earth’s resources worldwide.

As we are all responsible for leading lives that create the demand for unsustainable energy, we are also all part of the solution and we must, collectively, work together to protect the balance of life.

Fulton Alt hasn't said if she plans on exhibiting the photos. You can view more of her work at her blog.