Contrail
This new photographic exploration titled CONTRAIL is inspired by many years of watching the skies over Lake Tahoe slowly fill up with white lines as airplanes transporting thousands of passengers and overnight packages crisscross to destinations around the globe. It is at once a magnificent and frightening sight. And it’s a sight that never existed before the mid 1900’s, but is sure to be a sight that will continue to be more and more present as time moves us forward. The FAA forecasted that the number of U.S. airline passengers would increase from 840.8 million in 2017 to 1.28 billion in 2038, a growth of more than 50%. So unless battery technology develops significantly in the short term and becomes the best mode of power for airplanes, we will see our skies infinitely more full of air travel evidence. This project attempts to explore what that might look like, rendered in large scale 6ft+ prints.
Contrails or vapour trails are line-shaped clouds produced by aircraft engine exhaust or changes in air pressure, typically at aircraft cruising altitudes several miles above the Earth's surface. Contrails are composed primarily of water, in the form of ice crystals. Although the claim has been dismissed by the scientific community, the “chemtrail conspiracy theory” posits the erroneous belief that long-lasting condensation trails are "chemtrails" consisting of chemical or biological agents left in the sky by high-flying aircraft, sprayed for nefarious purposes undisclosed to the general public. Believers in this conspiracy theory say that while normal contrails dissipate relatively quickly, contrails that linger must contain additional substances. Those who subscribe to the theory speculate that the purpose of the chemical release may be solar radiation management, weather modification, psychological manipulation, human population control, or biological or chemical warfare, and that the trails are causing respiratory illnesses and other health problems.