This 31-by-26-inch near-square panorama documents Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio—a major military installation whose decades of operations created multiple Superfund sites requiring environmental remediation. The compact format focuses on infrastructure within a base covering thousands of acres.

Created in 1990, the work documents the environmental legacy of military operations that national security priorities had placed beyond normal regulation. Wright-Patterson’s history includes aircraft manufacturing, weapons testing, fuel storage, and maintenance operations that generated hazardous waste disposed of under practices later recognized as environmentally catastrophic.

Military installations present unique Superfund challenges: the same government responsible for contamination must fund its cleanup, national security concerns limit public access and disclosure, and base operations continue while remediation proceeds. Wright-Patterson exemplifies these complications.

The near-square format creates balanced composition for documenting a small portion of a vast installation. The photo collage technique fragments the visible infrastructure while revealing the landscape whose subsurface contamination threatens groundwater serving the Dayton region.

Wright-Patterson remains an active Air Force installation even as cleanup continues on multiple contaminated areas. This panorama documents one moment in an ongoing remediation effort, capturing physical evidence of military operations whose environmental costs are only now being addressed.