This 31-by-26-inch near-square panorama documents an old mill in Rock Creek, Ohio—a structure within or adjacent to an EPA Superfund site, the federal designation for severely contaminated locations requiring government-led cleanup. The compact format focuses attention on architecture embedded in polluted landscape.

Created in 1990, the work represents Hayashi’s systematic documentation of Superfund sites across Ohio, examining the physical evidence of environmental contamination that industrial operations left behind. The old mill—whether the contamination source or simply nearby—exists within a landscape requiring remediation.

Rock Creek in Ashtabula County lies within Ohio’s industrial northeast, where manufacturing and resource extraction created prosperity while generating waste that contaminated soil, water, and air. Superfund designation represented federal acknowledgment that private parties could not or would not address contamination threatening public health.

The near-square format creates balanced composition for a structure whose historical function—whatever the mill processed—may have contributed to environmental damage requiring decades of cleanup. The photo collage technique fragments the mill’s architecture while revealing its setting within landscape designated as hazardous.

Superfund sites often preserve structures that environmental liability makes impossible to redevelop, the contamination freezing industrial history in place while cleanup proceeds. This panorama documents one such frozen moment, architecture awaiting remediation that may or may not include its preservation.