In 1842, Darwin’s beloved botany professor, Reverend John Stevens Henslow, discovered the miraculous potential of phosphorus as a fertilizer. He hardly imagined that his countrymen would soon be grinding the bones of dead soldiers and mummified Egyptian cats to fertilise farms. Nor that his discovery would spawn a global mining industry, changing diets, lifestyle and the face of the planet forever. Journeying across the flat expanses of Henslow’s Suffolk to far-flung Nauru, an island stripped of its life force by this ravenous young industry, Lohmann sifts through the Earth’s geological layers and eras, exploring our strained relationship with a life-giving element. Bold, lyrical, genre-defying, White Light invites us to renew our broken relationship not just with the earth but with our own death and the life it brings after us.
