"Looking out the window, 35,000ft up in the air, far below I saw the shimmering sea and the coastline of Greenland dusted with snow. I enjoy flying, mainly for this reason. I peer out of the window on long-haul flights, often doing so for hours, taking advantage of the uninterrupted views of our blue planet. Gazing down onto parts of the world that look untouched and undisturbed, where human activity does not rule. To understand and appreciate the vastness of this wilderness there is no other way to view it than from above. But on this trip I do something different. I refocus my attention from what I see in the distance and look a little closer. My seat is just behind the wing of the plane, and in the foreground of my view are the engines.
We can take flying for granted, quite easily, I think, because everything is done for you. All we have to do is turn up on time, sit in a seat, watch a few films, read a book, eat some food off our laps, and get off at the other end. I cannot recall a time, on a flight previous to this one, when I boarded a plane and considered, or wanted to calculate, how much jet fuel is burnt on a trans-atlantic flight. But that is exactly what I did on this journey. I must have stared at those engines for hours.
I was heading for Minneapolis, where I would catch a connecting flight another few hundred miles to Bismarck, in North Dakota. From there I began my project along an oil pipeline, which started in Stanley, another 180 miles north. It was an unconventional journey. One that took me to parts of the USA that tourists rarely visit, through North and South Dakota, Iowa, and ending in Illinois 1,600 miles later."
In July and August 2017, I cycled 1600 miles along the route of the Dakota Access Pipeline, motivated by Donald J. Trump’s insensitive and highly irresponsible actions on the 24th January of the same year, when he signed a memorandum giving permission to finalise construction, making the pipeline live.
The Dakota Access Pipeline (also known as DAPL) has been controversial, threatening not only the Native American land and water supplies, but also destroying private farming land across the 4 states that it stretches across. Legal battles by landowners, as well as pipeline protestors for environmental protection, are still ongoing. OUR LAND & (S)OIL documents the people, towns & communities, land & wildlife that surround the pipeline to see how they have been affected. Using photography, interviews, reflective journalism, and publicly available documents.