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Giga-Project: Documenting the most destructive project on Earth

Award-winning landscape photographer Stuart Hall has been documenting the depressing course of the Giga-project in Northern Alberta, Canada – the largest industrial project in human history and likely to be the most destructive.

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Aerial view of the Tar Sands in Fort McMurray showing vast scarred landscape with curved excavation patterns and dark mining operations cutting through pale earth

Stuart first visited the Tar Sands in Fort McMurray in 2011 and tries to return almost every year to capture the increasing damage to the natural environment. The incredible beauty in the images belies the reality that the process of extracting the bitumen is, according to environmentalists, the world's most damaging activity.

The scale is so enormous that the wound can be seen from space. The oil embedded in the sand lies under 140,000 km2 of forests, equivalent to the size of England.

Writing in the New York Times in 2013 Thomas Homer-Dixon wrote: "The most obvious reason is that tar sands production is one of the world’s most environmentally damaging activities. It wrecks vast areas of boreal forest through surface mining and subsurface production. It sucks up huge quantities of water from local rivers, turns it into toxic waste and dumps the contaminated water into tailing ponds that now cover nearly 70 square miles."

Stuart specialises in capturing people, lifestyle and vast, abstract landscapes. His portfolio covers beautiful and bold advertising campaigns for off-road car brands; night-time cityscapes, breathtaking landscapes and architecture. The dramatic nature of his photographs gives them an almost cinematographic and epic dimension. Discover more via JSR.

Via direct submission | All images courtesy of Stuart Hall

Aerial view of tar sands mining operations in Fort McMurray showing excavators, trucks and winding roads cutting through grey and brown scarred landscape
Aerial view of the Tar Sands in Northern Alberta showing vast areas of dark excavated land, light-coloured tailings ponds and contrasting forest patches across the sprawling industrial landscape
Aerial view of the Tar Sands in Fort McMurray, Alberta, showing vast areas of excavated land, mining operations and tailing ponds across the scarred landscape
Aerial view of the Tar Sands in Fort McMurray showing massive excavation pits with dark bitumen deposits, surrounding industrial infrastructure and roads cutting through the boreal forest landscape
Aerial view of the Tar Sands in Northern Alberta showing vast excavated pits with dark bitumen deposits, pale sandy areas and heavy machinery, photographed by Stuart Hall
Aerial view of tar sands mining operations in Fort McMurray, Alberta, showing vast excavated areas, industrial infrastructure and tailings ponds amid cleared boreal forest
Aerial view of an industrial tailings pond at the Tar Sands in Fort McMurray, with dark contaminated water surrounded by pale excavated earth and vehicle tracks
Aerial view of tar sands mining in Northern Alberta showing vast pale and dark striations across the landscape with a blue waterway cutting through the industrial terrain
Aerial view of the Tar Sands in Fort McMurray showing vast excavation sites with heavy machinery, winding roads and tailing ponds across the scarred landscape
Aerial view of the Tar Sands in Fort McMurray, Alberta, showing massive excavated areas with white tailings ponds and dark mining zones cutting through forested landscape
Aerial view of the Tar Sands in Northern Alberta showing vast mining excavations, stripped earth and tailing ponds across the scarred landscape
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