“WE SEE THE SURFACE, BUT THERE IS SOMETHING BEYOND THE SURFACE”: RECOVERING MASUMI HAYASHI’S EPA SUPERFUND SITE PHOTO COLLAGES

Abstract

This article explores the double-edged nature of Masumi Hayashi’s artwork. It focuses on Hayashi’s Environmental Protection Agency Superfund Site series as well as on select examples of her opus. Hayashi’s eco-photographical collages and her pictures of post-industrial sites bring environmental and socio-political issues to the fore by forcing a perspective of incongruity on the viewer and by exemplifying a dynamics of an ‘anthropocenic sublime.’ This concept is based on what Miles Orvell has termed the ‘destructive sublime.’ It emerges from the contradiction between the aestheticized object and the moral implications that arise from visual engagements with – in the case of Hayashi – environmental destruction.