jonas fischer - portfolio

Cloud Index (2021)

Cloud Index

Cloud Index is a growing online archive that collects and presents cloud imagery of fossil fuel combustion sites. Since September 2020, I have been photographing the skies above power plants, industrial facilities and other greenhouse gas emitters.

Even beyond the end of fossil fuel use, their consequences will continue to shape humanity and its environment for the unforeseeable future: While the clouds in the sky will have long since faded, the impact of emissions and the resulting damage will be far greater than we can imagine today.

I see this project as a documentary observation in a time when all knowledge about climate change and its consequences has long been available, yet too little radical change is happening. This visual contribution makes the supposedly invisible destruction visible, puts it in the context of facts and offers a new way of looking at clouds that sees ourselves as part of a global problem.

In a Europe-wide comparison of greenhouse gas emissions, Germany occupies a central place among the ten strongest emitters with seven power plants. With about 805 million tons of emitted greenhouse gases in 2019, Germany ranks first in Europe.

www.cloud-index.cloud