He’s been to many of the locales across the continent probably found toward the very end of most travelers’ sight-seeing lists: the deforested lands of Kenogami in Ontario, Canada; the mountaintops laid bare by coal miners in Appalachia; and the beds of petroleum coke in Texas City, Texas. J Henry Fair has journeyed to each of them so that those less inclined to follow this itinerary can simply view the pages of his book, The Day After Tomorrow: Images of Our Earth in Crisis. To be published by powerHouse Books in January 2011, it assembles 80 vivid color photographs from Fair’s 10-year-long and still ongoing project, “Industrial Scars,” which examines the repercussions of modern lifestyles on the natural landscape. Essays are interspersed throughout by prominent writers and environmentalists, including NASA’s James Hansen and Tensie Whelan of the Rainforest Alliance. For Fair, artwork is a call to action. Planet spoke to him about the power, the ugliness, and, yes, the beauty of his images.

Artists often resist giving the impression that there is any political motivation behind their work, but you are completely forthright. How did you decide to do away with any pretense about what you were hoping to communicate?
Well, why be pretentious? The first thing that I am asked when I show someone these pictures is ‘Oh my god, what is it?’ And actually the pictures came before the knowledge of what is it. I went looking for it, but I didn’t know what I’d found.