Brook Reynolds
Retired Pumps
From the series Light, Sweet, Crude
2007
Pigment print
20 x 20 inches
Courtesy of the artist
© Brook Reynolds

Does the disrepair of gasoline stations, once a welcome beacon for the highway traveler, signal the voluntary end of human consumption of fossil fuels, as the artist hopes, or is the line of decommissioned gas pumps in this picture simply a series of tombstones for a species that once drank from them so deeply? To elicit the unease and foreboding elicited by these scenarios, Brook Reynolds creates an overcast sky in her pictures. For her, these empty sites are filled with anxiety and represent the failure of our present system, whatever outcome we may arrive at in the future.