Compelling Photos Reveal the Legacy of America’s Most Hated Corporation - Feature Shoot
▻http://www.featureshoot.com/2014/09/compelling-photos-reveal-legacy-americas-hated-corporation
For nearly 40 years, while producing the now-banned industrial coolants known as PCBs at a local factory, Monsanto Co. routinely discharged toxic waste into a west Anniston creek and dumped millions of pounds of PCBs into oozing open-pit landfills. Thousands of pages of Monsanto documents – many emblazoned with warnings such as “CONFIDENTIAL: Read and Destroy” – show that for decades, the corporate giant concealed what it did and what it knew.
Over the past five years, photographer Mathieu Asselin has devoted his life to researching and documenting the controversial history of Monsanto, a leading American corporation manufacturing agricultural chemicals and genetically modified food products. For Monsanto: A Photographic Investigation, he has traveled throughout the country, from the PCB-contaminated creeks of Anniston, Alabama to the hazardous waste sites of Sauget, Illinois, photographing the landscapes and persons devastated by exposure Monsanto’s toxic products and the company’s monopoly on seeds. Included in Asselin’s dark portrait of Monsanto are objects collected by the photographer himself: vintage advertisements, memorabilia, and newspaper clippings.
In its 113 year history, Monsanto has manufactured everything from plastic to the now-banned Agent Orange, an herbicide used to destroy a large area of jungle during the Vietnam War. Agent Orange has since been found to cause miscarriages and birth defects in the children of Vietnam veterans. Today, Monsanto is a main producer of the herbicide glyphosate, which goes by the brand-name Roundup, and bovine growth hormone, both which have raised ethical and environmental concerns relating to the welfare of animals, humans, and the environment. We spoke to Asselin about his project as well as Monsanto’s past, present, and future.
