This is not a lava stream on Kona, Hawaii but rather a "fresh water" river in industrialized China!

This photo is entitled: Nickel Tailings #34, photographed by Edward Burtynsky, who is the subject of a documentary called Manufactured Landscapes.

(Update: the word 'tailings' refers specifically to fine waste suspended in water.)

MANOHLA DARGIS wrote a piece for the The New York Times about a documentary called Manufactured Landscapes; a film about Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky and his photo compositions of industrialized China. It bewilders me that such a valuable resource such as a river or stream as featured above can be laid to waste in exchange for paper money. (I know that sounds rather existential or pompous but a continuous source of water just seems more valuable; or more real for that matter, than gold or paper to me.)

Though the above photo is strikingly beautiful, the aesthetics of it undermines the gravity or consequences of the industrial, toilet-hole, China has become. When the cameras roll at the Beijing Olympics in 2008, this is what the place really looks like behind those cameras. [Link] [DVD Link]