The South Carolina coast as you’ve never seen it

Charleston native J Henry Fair spent the better part of the past year and a half sticking his head out the window of a Cesna 142 and snapping photos of South Carolina’s coast.

The photographer, who is known for his abstract aerial photographs of industrial waste, turned his camera to South Carolina for “Eyes on the Edge: J Henry Fair Photographs the South Carolina Coast.” The exhibit opens at the Columbia Museum of Art Friday and runs through Oct. 23.

Through 25 dramatic, large-scale photographs, Fair walks a line between beautiful and frightening.

One photo taken above Beaufort shows fingers of gray-blue water twisting and winding through the lush St. Helena Sound wetlands. Another depicts a dense forest in Hardeeville gashed to make space for prefab homes. There’s one of the calm blue waters of Myrtle Beach abutting a massive parking lot.

“Is this just the nature of progress, that all good things must be cut down or paved? Or are there effective limits to growth that will preserve this region into the future?” Fair asks.

Fair considers himself an environmental advocate and conservationist. He grew up in jonboats cruising Charleston’s rivers and setting up duck blinds in the marshes for his father. He now splits his time living in New York City and Berlin.

After photographing the coast, Fair said, “It’s even more beautiful than I remember it. And we’re doing a very bad job of protecting it.”

Part of Fair’s concern is that the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration predicts Charleston is among coastal cities that will have at least 30 days of nuisance flooding yearly by 2020.

“The ocean is rising and climate change is happening fast. South Carolina will be one of the hardest hit,” Fair said.

Although his opinions are strong, his “Eyes on the Edge” photographs don’t come off as political or heavy-handed.

More than anything, they are simply stunning.

Part of the allure is the bird’s-eye view, which “is completely unnatural to humans and therefore intrinsically interesting,” Fair said.

The museum’s chief curator Will South added that the large scale of the images – each roughly the size of a kitchen table – lends a heft of impact. “And you could not experience these sweeping designs in nature except for in the air,” South said.

“Eyes on the Edge” is part of a larger project documenting the coastlines of America. Fair has already photographed all of Texas, Alabama, New York and New Jersey. The South Carolina collection is the first to be exhibited.

“I hope it will alert us to the development that’s going on and give us pause,” Fair said. “Maybe we might want to get a little smarter about this.”