The sun setting behind a hazy urban landscape often creates an amazing orange-red-blue sunset. But what lurks behind this colorful cloud? Is it still a beautiful sight when what produced the spectacle also produces noxious fumes and toxic waste? The se are the questions asked by Nina Salvatore in her photographic exhibition Noxious Enchantment currently on view at the Melville Library Gallery.

SalvatoreÕs photographs are deceptively inviting, the seductive colors and small scale invite viewers to step up and take a close look at what, surprisingly, are pictures of factories and the pollution they produce. In one picture, a rusty drai npipe drips into an acid green pool. In another, light glints off the shiny surfaces of a factory while misty smoke provides a theatrical shroud. The photographs of urban waste trick you in their beauty.

The photographs are also deceptive in their creation. Salvatore takes black and white photographs and then manipulates them digitally on her computer using Photoshop and prints them on an Iris printer. The colors she adds, eerie greens, smoky blues, deep grays, fiery oranges, are a combination of natural and invented hues. Several of the elements in the photographs are also digitally added, such as the moss on a rock in one picture. The juxtaposition of real and artificial elements gives the photog raphs a surreal effect, so that we arenÕt certain if they are documents, purely aesthetic objects, or stills from a science fiction movie.

The fact that the pictures are manipulated may appear contrary to SalvatoreÕs desire to make her viewers aware of very real environmental pollutants, however, the fact that we donÕt know what is real or artificial is consistent with most peopleÕs lack of awareness of toxic hazards in the environment. SalvatoreÕs interest in the environment lead her to research New York stateÕs toxic waste dump sites. She found that on Long Island alone there are approximately 170 to xic dump sites, yet none of the exact locations are disclosed. Additionally, she discovered that a dump site can sell levels of allowable waste to another site that exceeds its limits. In other words, higher than legal levels of toxicity go unregulated in certain areas, usually poor neighborhoods. SalvatoreÕs photographs were taken in Port Jefferson, Bridgeport, Philadelphia and Manhattan, yet their polluting smoke is a universal issue. There are no labels on these photographs to tell us where each factory or dump site is located. The idea is that they are everywhere, right under our noses and right before our eyes, which tend to glaze over the frightening significance of the picturesque billowing smoke.

The first photograph in the exhibition is suspended from the ceiling in a Plexiglas frame at eye level so that you must view it and walk around it in order to see the rest of the exhibition. Its subject matter, barbed wire surrounded by colorful wisps of smoke, immediately calls attention to the tension and controversy surrounding environmental issues. It also causes Salvatore to question what the barbed wire fence keeps in and who it keeps out, and why. From these photographs, it is obvious that th e fences do not keep the toxic smoke from billowing out. And who would want to go in?

Any serenity the pictures might offer on their own is purposefully countered with a loud, industrial soundtrack playing in the gallery. We are relentlessly reminded that the sublime beauty of the shiny metal and colorful smoke causes more distress tha n pleasure. Severe silver frames and even white lighting contribute to the industrial feeling of the installation.

The exhibition ends with an enigma. In the last photograph, a deserted monochromatic landscape looks back at us with a face barely visible on the surface of a rock. The face seems sad as it melts into its polluted surroundings, leaving us with the ho llow feeling that ephemerality is not the attribute of smoke alone.