it's a single image from a single place and time — the hills of western Hungary, six months after a devastating industrial accident.
In late 2010, the waste reservoir of a Hungarian aluminum oxide plant burst, releasing millions and millions of gallons of caustic red sludge. The meter-high toxic mudslide quickly moved downhill through two nearby villages, burying buildings, poisoning fields and killing 10 people.
Soldiers and volunteers shoveled the muck into trucks and hosed down the streets, but where the sludge had been, every surface was stained red.