Given enough time, nature has an uncanny ability to erase evidence of human activity. But as Joshua Dudley Greer’s series Point Pleasant illustrates, not everything we do can be undone, and grave danger can lurk within placid places.

Greer’s images depict seemingly unremarkable scenes in the woods of West Virginia, landscapes pockmarked by concrete igloos. The images were taken at McClintic Wildlife Management Area, part of what once was West Virginia Ordnance Works, a military facility that manufactured and stored trinitrotoluene (TNT) during World War II.

At the height of its production, the facility outside Point Pleasant, West Virginia, produced 500,000 pounds of TNT each day. The site was closed in 1945, and what wasn't eventual made into a regional airport became recreational space. Much of the land, contaminated by TNT and its chemical precursor DNT, is a Superfund site that's been on the National Priorities List since 1983. Surprisingly, remediation doesn't involve much removal of hazardous material. Monitoring and containment is the strategy.

Beyond the explosion in 2010 of a storage igloo that contained 20,000 lbs of unstable materials, it's been pretty quiet. Greer's photos explore the lurking danger of the land, and all the ways people use it.

“American landscape has a substantial connection to history and that history is primarily one of violence," says Greer. "So for me it’s often difficult to separate those things. I think a lot of people might misread some of the photographs as simply depicting nature, but this place is entirely constructed. The contamination isn’t necessarily noticeable, so the photographs are often about what isn’t visible as much as what is visible.”

Adding to the air of menace, these woods supposedly are home to the Mothman, a mythical creature with 10-foot wings and red-eyes popularized by John Keel’s book The Mothman Prophecies. Greer was gripped by the enigmatic place from his first day traipsing through the marshes and between the trees.

“I knew it was something I wanted to pursue," he says. "I’ve tried to layer all those interests into the project in some way - mythology, history, war, land use.”

Greer had to schlep his folding aluminum 8x10 Calumet C-1 camera that through thick overgrowth to capture the scenes, but he didn't mind.

“The camera weighs a ton but it is precise and sturdy,” he says. “I enjoy the physical act of making a picture, so if I have to work a little harder to get the pictures I want, I’m okay with that. It feels like I’ve earned them in some weird way.”

Photographers aren’t common in these remote woods. Greer had a close call with a hunter who momentarily mistook him for prey. From then on, he never ventured forth without a hi-vis vest. On another occasion, Greer had to swim for shore when his flimsy boat collapsed beneath him .

“TNT Storage Igloo S5-A is completely surrounded by water and the visibility is so poor that I didn’t know how deep it was,” says Greer. “I bought a shitty little inflatable raft and tried to get myself where I needed to be. But the thing popped and I had to bail into the freezing water.”

Looking at Point Pleasant, one wonders about the future of managing obsolete munitions and waste. TNT storage is child’s play compared to managing nuclear waste, chemical weapons, and toxic byproducts of their manufacture. The Department of Defense holds millions of acres of land throughout the United States, an expansive archipelago that stokes Greer’s imagination. He’s got his eye on other training areas, production plants, and classified sites with similar tension between man and nature.

“If they ever decide to let a civilian photographer into Area 51, that would be a pretty sweet gig,” says Greer. “I’d call it Dreamland.”

Many of the ways in which we alter the landscape–water table pollution and depletion, extinction of flora and fauna, carbon emissions–are slow and subtle but nevertheless potentially terminal. A photograph showing a single moment in time struggles to depict this. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth the attempt.

“It’s inaccurate at this point to call any landscape pure. I call this area a post-natural landscape,” says Greer. “There are innumerable ways in which we can and have altered the land, and most of them aren’t immediately recognizable. People still think Central Park is nature, so in my mind we have to expand our understanding and vocabulary to deal with the actualities of our relationship to the world we live in. That applies to looking at photographs as well.”

All images: Joshua Dudley Greer