Alfredo Jaar The End
The End (GSL_a), 2025
Series
The End focuses on the Great Salt Lake in Utah, described by scientists as an ‘environmental nuclear bomb’. It is a keystone ecosystem for the western hemisphere, but has lost 73% of its water since the mid-nineteenth century, exposing toxic dust and driving salinity dangerously high.
Without a dramatic increase in water flow, the lake risks disappearing, devastating Utah’s public health, economy and environment. The lake and its wetlands sustain rainfall and provide a habitat for ten million migratory birds.
This unfolding disaster may be past the point of no return, a potential tragedy of incalculable magnitude and a sign of things to come. Jaar’s objective was to show the fate of the lake while revealing its beauty and potential. In counterpoint to the scale of the disaster, Jaar printed these images in a small, unspectacular format as a visual whisper, a lament for our dying planet.
About the photographer
Born Santiago, Chile, 1956
Chilean
New York, United States
About Alfredo Jaar
Jaar is an artist, architect, photographer and filmmaker whose work documenting humanity’s impact on the planet has included, in addition to The End, the series Hiroshima, Hiroshima (2023) and The End of the World (2024), which addresses the effects of uncontrolled and unethical global extractivism.
He participated in the Venice Biennale (1986, 2007, 2009 and 2013) and the Bienal de São Paulo, Brazil (1987, 1989, 2010 and 2021), as well as Documenta in Kassel, Germany (1987 and 2002).
Solo exhibitions of Jaar’s work have been held at the Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne (2007); Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlinische Galerie and Neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst, all in Berlin (2012); Les Rencontres d’Arles, France (2013); Yorkshire Sculpture Park, United Kingdom (2017); Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town (2020); SESC Pompéia, São Paulo (2021) and Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art (2023).
Jaar has received numerous awards including the Hiroshima Art Prize in 2018 and the Hasselblad Award in Sweden in 2020. In 2024, he was awarded the IV Mediterranean Albert Camus Prize in Spain and this year has won the Edward MacDowell Medal in Peterborough, New Hampshire.
His work can be found in dozens of public and private collections, including The Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim Museum, New York; Museu de Arte de São Paulo; Tate, London; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; M+, Hong Kong and Tokushima Modern Art Museum, Japan. He became a Guggenheim Fellow in 1985 and a MacArthur Fellow in 2000, both in the United States.
Jaar has executed more than 70 public art works around the world and over 80 monographs of his work have been published.