Wahala

The images in Wahala depict both the places in the world where raw materials are extracted from the earth for profit, and the people who make their homes there. Photographer Robin Hinsch travelled to where the human impact on the planet was particularly visible to confront the viewer with the blunt ecological and human repercussions of the global reliance on fossil fuels.

The photographs in the book were made in the oil fields of the Niger Delta, Nigeria; the coal belt of Jharkhand, India; and the open cast mines of Brandenburg and North Rhine- Westphalia in Germany and Silesia in Poland. They shift between details and overviews, landscapes and portraits, the familiar and the foreign, disorientating the viewer as to what and where they are looking at. The images are cinematic—dark and brooding skies, dramatic landscapes lit by gas flares, collapsing ruins of buildings. Deviating from straight documentary, the book constructs new narratives of associative imagery to tell the story of exploitation—both by international companies and by those living in the areas impacted by their presence, in turn, hacking into the system.

The Yoruba word ‘wahala’ means ‘problem’ or ‘stress’ and is a widely understood pidgin term in Nigeria. It rarely stands alone, but when it does it implies there is a problem that leaves one shaken or speechless. Hinsch’s focus on where man’s ecological effect on the world is most glaring aims to have this impact—showing both the subject’s complexity and that the problem is our problem.