A Photographer Makes the Toxic Gowanus Canal Look Beautiful

Poisoned with industrial pollution, infected with gonorrhea, home to the occasional dead body—it's difficult to see the Gowanus Canal as anything but a filthy hell-swamp. Yet Steven Hirsch has managed to do the impossible: depict the notorious waterway in gorgeous, jewel-hued strokes reminiscent of Impressionism's finest masterpieces.

Note that the 66-year-old Hirsch is not a painter but a photographer; it's hard to believe that when scrutinizing his rainbow-dripping images. For those who think of the Gowanus as a fetid pipeline of sewage-brown water, this documentation of the Superfund site will seem strange. It may also be disturbing once they realize that the splashes of intense color hint at petroleum spills, coal-tar waste, volatile organic compounds, heavy metals, and all the other crap people have dumped in the canal over the decades.