Virginia Intermont Exhibits Mysterious “Point Pleasant” Photography

Joshua Dudley Greer, the acclaimed photographer of the ruins of a once monumental military-industrial complex in West Virginia, exhibits images of the mysterious site Nov. 3 through Dec. 8 at Virginia Intermont College. The exhibit is in the photography gallery of the Anne R. Worrell Fine Arts Center and is free and open to the public.

Greer will provide a gallery talk at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 16. He is a visiting assistant professor of photography at East Tennessee State University and was a finalist this year for a Photolucida Critical Mass Award, which recognizes the best emerging and mid-career artists working.

His work, “Point Pleasant,” named as a finalist in the fine art category for Blurb’s Photography Book Now Competition, focuses on the West Virginia Ordnance Works, a former explosives manufacturing facility constructed during World War II near Point Pleasant, West Virginia. Occupying 8,000 acres along the eastern bank of the Ohio River, the WVOW was for the production and storage of trinitrotoluene. At its peak, nearly 500,000 pounds of TNT were produced each day and stored in a massive array of concrete igloos, camouflaged with a thin layer of earth. The site closed in 1945 and the land was deeded to the state of West Virginia for the creation of the McClintic State Wildlife Management Area. A large system of ponds and wetlands was constructed as a habitat for wildlife. The area came to be known simply as TNT and developed into a popular hangout for hunters and fishermen.

However, in the early 1980s, the EPA and state investigations revealed that the groundwater, soil and surface water of TNT were heavily contaminated with explosive compounds, as well as arsenic, lead, beryllium and asbestos. The site was placed on the EPA’s National Priorities List in 1983 and extensive cleanup efforts began in 1991. While a large portion of the original facility was remediated, many of the toxic and explosive contaminants remain buried on site.

In May 2010, one of the remaining concrete igloos exploded. Government officials were brought in to investigate a number of igloos that were being privately leased to local businesses and citizens. After issuing several dozen search warrants, they discovered 14 separate igloos had been storing hundreds of thousands of pounds of unstable, heavy explosives. Due to the potential risk of another explosion, the area was closed to the public and remains under 24-hour surveillance. No remediation solution has been determined.

“The remnants of the WVOW survive as relics to our nation’s history of warfare,” says Greer, referring to the site as “a haunting place of beauty and mystique that has a complicated history of violence and abuse.”

He photographed the ruins complex as it tangles with the surrounding landscape of forest, fields and swamp. The suggestion of visibility or invisibility runs throughout the work, “alluding to the way in which we commonly misperceive both contamination and beauty through strictly visual means,” he says, adding that TNT storage igloos “are depicted in a serial typology to convey the massive scale of contemporary weapons production, while the emptiness of the landscape, photographed with a muted palette and diffused light, is meant to evoke a kind of post-apocalyptic environment – one that is at times bleak and somber, yet also strangely resilient and beautiful.”

Greer has a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Georgia, Lamar Dodd School of Art, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Maryland Institute College of Art.