GREENHOUSE

Photo Credit: Mika Adams, NYC, May 18th 2004 A generation after the volcanic disaster that wiped out 70% of humanity in 1980, the tribes of survivors began to reclaim their world. So many were choked by gas, crushed by falling buildings, drowned by the waves or starved as the crops failed. Yet somehow, in the face of social collapse, humanity prevailed. The ash had eventually cleared from the skies, the acid rain stopped. The harvests were starting to bear fruit in the fertile volcanic mud, and a new generation was growing up with no memory of the time before. Photographer Mika Adams was born four years after the disaster, in 1984, and was a member of the first expedition from the Appalachian stronghold to the abandoned city of New York. Captured on her grandmother’s Canon AE-1, this image was taken at a railway station in Manhattan. With a thick layer of fertile mud washed inside the buildings and protection from the acid rain falling from the skies, indoor plant life had sprung up with vigour. The young explorers felt a sense of awe, and grandeur. Their lives were still blighted by suffering, but they knew no different. Here, amongst the relics of the past, there was a sense of potential, and purpose. 24 years to the day after the darkness began, they could finally verbalise their goal: to rebuild and reclaim the greatness of the past. 2000 x 3000 pixels 8.81mb