Prix Pictet 2009 Shortlist Announced

Andreas Gursky, Untitled XIII, 2002

From the official press release: GENEVA & ARLES, France– A shortlist of twelve outstanding international photographers, from which one will be selected later this year to receive the Prix Pictet, the world’s photography prize for environmental sustainability, was announced today at Europe’s leading photography festival, Les Rencontres d’Arles in France.

The prize is supported by Swiss bank Pictet & Cie. Photographers shortlisted for the £60,000 (CHF100,000) first prize are:

Darren Almond, UK; Christopher Anderson, Canada; Sammy Baloji, Congo; Edward Burtynsky, Canada; Naoya Hatakeyama, Japan; Andreas Gursky, Germany; Nadav Kander, South Africa; Ed Kashi, USA; Abbas Kowsari, Iran; Yao Lu, China; Edgar Martins, Portugal and Christopher Steele Perkins, UK.

The Prix Pictet is an annual search for photographs that communicate powerful messages of global environmental significance under a broad theme. This year the theme is ‘earth’. A Mexican garbage dump where people forage to sustain a pitiful existence; the changing landscape and displaced communities of China’s Yangtze River; the devastating impact of oil production in the Niger Delta; and the annual pilgrimage to the desert fronts of the Iran-Iraq war are among the subjects that feature in the work of this year’s shortlisted artists.

The submissions speak of the harmful and often irreversible effects of exploiting the earth’s resources and reflect on the immediate and long-term impact of unsustainable development on communities across the globe.

‘Earth’, a book published by teNeues, cataloguing the work of the Prix Pictet nominees will accompany this year’s prize and launched on 6 October at Purdy Hicks Gallery, London.

The winner will be announced by Kofi Annan, honorary president of the Prix Pictet, on 22 October 2009 at the Passage de Retz gallery, Paris. A further award, in the form of a commission for one of the shortlisted photographers to visit a region where Pictet & Cie are supporting a sustainability project, will be announced at the same time.

Prix Pictet will collaborate with FIAC (22 – 25 October), Paris’ major international contemporary and modern art fair, and Paris Photo, the world’s leading event for photography (19 – 22 November).

An independent jury of seven leading figures from the worlds of the visual arts and the environment, chaired by the photography critic, Francis Hodgson, made the selection from over 300 nominations put forward by the seventy Prix Pictet nominators – a group that includes leading critics, practitioners and curators.

Nicolas Pictet, Partner of Pictet & Cie, said ‘The calibre of the shortlisted work for this second year of the Prix Pictet illustrates how the issue of sustainability resonates throughout the artistic community. We strongly believe that by bringing these images to the attention of the world, Prix Pictet will further highlight the devastating effect climate change is having on our planet and ensure sustainability remains at the heart of global policy making.’

Awarding the inaugural Prix Pictet to Canadian photographer Benoit Aquin last October, Kofi Annan said: ‘It is my hope that the Prix Pictet will help to deepen understanding of the changes taking place in our world and raise public awareness about the urgency of taking preventative action.’

———–

I’m not surprised to see most of the photographers who’ve made the shortlist, except for one. Edgar Martins. It’ll be very interesting to see if the latest controversy over the pulled NY Times images affects his candidacy negatively. The shortlist results came in only a few hours ago, and I would think the news of the controversy and ultimate withrawl of images from the NYT site hit France as soon as it did here in NYC, especially since the shortlist was announced from one of the largest photo festivals in the world.

I have been a fan Martins’ extensive bodies of work over the years, and loved Topologies. I find it hard however to now believe his black skies were all done within camera. I have no problem with darkroom techniques like dodging, burning, contrast or softening tools, etc. Or even with digital manipulation if that’s how it’s labeled. But to misrepresent your work in a way the public believes to be true goes against the ideology behind his work. Gursky on the other hand, while he doesn’t reveal the step-by-step process of his pictures, does say there is digital alteration and manipulation present in his work. Does it make it any less respectable? No, because it’s there for us to take into account and put into the context of his ideas and the respective images he creates from those ideas. Photographs are after all constructs of ideas that originate in less tangible forms.

Stay tuned on how this plays out in this most coveted of environmental photography prizes.

Sebastião Salgado: Genesis

Sebastiao Salgado one of the most well known photo journalists of our time. Over the past 36 years the Brazilian born photographer has been photographing developing countries and their respective communities showing us what these remote locations, their peoples, and their everyday lives entail. Salgado works in the humanitarian and social documentary vein, seeking out indigenous cultures as well as impoverished ones, with previous projects including migrant workers, displaced peoples, famine and war torn lands, and political issues. He uses photography as a means to the end, utilizing its immediate visual story telling capabilities as a tool to further urgent political and social issue based discussion.

© Sebastião Salgado / Amazonas images

Salgado began his career as a professional photographer in Paris, in 1973, and worked with the photo agencies Sygma, Gamma, and Magnum Photos up till 1994, when he and Lélia Wanick Salgado created Amazonas images, an agency that exclusively handles his work. Together, Lélia and Sebastião have worked since the 1990’s on the restoration of a small part of the Atlantic Forest in Brazil. In 1998 they succeeded in making this land a nature preserve and created Instituto Terra, whose mission is reforestation, conservation and environmental education.

© Sebastião Salgado / Amazonas images

Salgado’s latest and probably the largest project to date is titled Genesis (which he says was not meant to invoke religious connotation), an environmental documentary project on a grandiose scale. While previously photographing the plight of various lands and its peoples, Salgado, an environmentalist, thought he needed to photograph the areas that have not been touched by humans, war, famine, pestilence, etc. To show the amazing and precious places that still exist on this planet is to bring to light how important and urgent their survival and preservation is. He hopes to make a difference in the larger environmental movement through his images of “pristine” places around the globe, taking him from 3 months in the Galapagos, to 500 miles trekking across the Ethiopian mountains. He has turned to focus from social systems to eco systems.

© Sebastião Salgado / Amazonas images

The images are dark and moody, in a grainy black and white. And while I’ve learned that Salgado has recently switched to digital cameras, the images still appear consistent with his style and look for over the past 30 years. They are not to be confused with traditional journalistic imagery, as he subjects here aren’t seen from a voyeurs point of view. Instead Salgado engages with his subjects, be it African tribesmen, Russian bears, or Venezuelan forests. They are slightly romanticized, but not overly so. I think the aim for this project is to romanticize these places specifically for the purpose of showing viewers eco systems that yet remained untouched, but only for so much longer. They have to be shown in an elevated light in order to truly cause emotion and not just give information.

Salgado’s work is all about context. Nothing is static or still, even in an image that may appear still. The narrative present has a past and a future, we’re only glimpsing a moment in passing. There is a real sense of fluidity in his images, but a calculated fluidity as well. Technically, they are perfect. Composition, light, POV, angles, all come together in the frame. But, that is the means to an end as well. There is always a story behind each Salgado photograph, and his techniques are merely the language with which he tells these stories. The style or genre is not quite documentary, not quite fine art, but somewhere again, in flux, moving between the two never landing in one place or the other, just like his images.

Salgado says of this body of work, “I have named this project GENESIS because my aim is to return to the beginnings of our planet: to the air, water and the fire that gave birth to life, to the animal species that have resisted domestication, to the remote tribes whose ‘primitive’ way of life is still untouched, to the existing examples of the earliest forms of human settlement and organisation. A potential path towards humanity’s rediscovery of itself. So many times I’ve photographed stories that show the degradation of the planet, I thought the only way to give us an incentive, to bring hope, is to show the pictures of the pristine planet – to see the innocence. And then we can understand what we must preserve.” -Sebastião Salgado via Jori Finkel for the NY Times.

To see more of Salgado’s striking images on what looks to be a 12 years project, currently 4 already under his belt, please visit the Peter Fetterman gallery where he is represented by clicking here.

Further links to the NY Times article here and to the Guardian’s regular posts on Genesis as it progresses here.

Questions and Answers: Richard Misrach

“In preparation for the High’s installation of On the Beach, Richard Misrach took time to answer a few questions about his influences and experiences over the course of his career” for his new solo exhibition titled “On the Beach” recently opened at the High Museum in Atlanta. The following is the full Q+A courtesy of the museum.

1. Your photographs often draw attention to human impact on the environment. Why is this issue important to you? Do you have a positive or negative view of the direction in which we are moving, given all that you have seen?

It is the great paradox of human existence. We must exploit our environment to exist, and we risk destroying it (and ourselves) in the process. It’s an extraordinary delicate balance and a compelling subject for one’s life’s work.

But there is also a deeply personal element to the work because I love being in the landscape: I find an aesthetic pleasure there that I don’t quite understand. My pictures are as much, maybe more, about the existential mystery of what I experience in the landscape than about civilization’s relation to it.

As far as the future of the planet, it’s hard not to worry. Just because we haven’t set in motion an irreparable calamity yet, is no insurance that we won’t in the future. Our nuclear arsenals, overpopulation, energy challenges and pollution remain growing threats. And yet, more than likely, it will be the unexpected that will be our undoing.

2. You have typically focused on the American landscape, free of human figures. In On the Beach, figures populate many of the scenes—why? What brought about this change?

After 9/11 several images of people falling/jumping from the towers were published in newspapers. Those images were some of the most terrifying and heartbreaking I’ve ever seen. I was haunted by them.

In the past, I photographed people in the landscape where they usually introduced a sense of scale and relationship to our manmade environment. The people falling from the towers provided a whole new kind of scale: a relationship to the abyss—the abyss that haunts all of us. Because of those pictures, I found traces of our relationship to the sublime—fear, resilience, defiance, peace and joy—even in the most ordinary activities by the sea.

3. You’ve been asked a lot about how you made the photos. What inspired you to assume that particular vantage point? How does it enhance the images and/or the message behind them?

The unusual “god’s eye view” draws attention to itself implicating the photographer in the process. This was important to me, as I was struck by the fact that right after 9/11, people carried on with their lives as if nothing had happened. People were vacationing and I was working; it was really weird actually.

It reminded me of that great Bruegel painting of Icarus falling into the sea. As Icarus plunges to his death, the farmer tills, the ship sails, life goes on.

My photograph of the handstand evokes the painting while inverting it—the legs represent the resilience? Obliviousness? In the face of our national tragedy. Even at the moment of such a profound national tragedy life inexplicably goes on.

Also, there is a sense of voyeurism and surveillance embedded in the all seeing vantage point. It is a relatively benign reminder—nobody is really compromised—but the camera is always watching in our Google satellite world.

4. To create the On the Beach series you used an 8×10 view camera. Can you talk a little about the technical advantages and challenges of working with a large format camera?

From a technical standpoint the 8×10″ camera was the wrong tool for this project. It is a cumbersome suitcase that requires reloading for each shot and has slow shutter speeds. It is not good for quick captures or stopping movement. By the time I would set up the camera, focus, load the film holder, pull out the film slide and depress the shutter, my subjects had often literally swum out of the frame. So many great pictures were missed.

That said, the fine detail afforded by the large negative, when I did get what I wanted, was crucial to achieve the intimate gestures and grand scale of the work.

5. You are perhaps best known for your images of the American West. What drew you to that landscape? How do you choose a location?

I was born in Los Angeles and surfed and skied growing up. The western landscape was my universe. Since 1968 I have had five Volkswagon campers which I’ve used to travel the West for 2 to 3 weeks at a time. I throw in my camera, food, film and some coolers with film holders, and head off without any destination in mind.

If it’s hot, I stay north, cold, I head to southern deserts. Basically, I wander around chasing the light from dawn to dusk and see what I can discover.

I usually found that if I had a preconceived idea for a project it wouldn’t amount to much. Discovery—an aggressive receptivity, if you will—of what is in the landscape provides the inspiration for new ideas.

6. With the advent of digital technology, photography has consolidated its position as the medium of the masses…what are your views on the prevalence of photography on the internet and the use of digital? How has it impacted your work?

So far the omnipresence of imagery on the internet hasn’t had a huge impact on me. However, digital production has completely changed the way I work and think about photography. I haven’t shot film in almost two years and am now making all of my own prints again (haven’t done that since the 1970’s). Some prints are as large as 10×13 feet!

Having full access to the new technologies has encouraged me to play and experiment in ways that take me back to when I was a beginning photographer. And given that everyone now in college will have the same opportunities—access to the means of production and radical new tools—the medium is destined for big, important changes. I can’t imagine a more exciting period for photography.

7. Over the course of your career photography’s place in the world of fine art has shifted and evolved. Do you feel that the way that photography is perceived/accepted has changed significantly since you began?

Despite historic claims to the contrary, photography was marginalized by the art world for a long time. However, in the last decade and a half, photography has been at the fore of art world practice. Moreover, when I began photography the idea of making a living selling work in galleries wasn’t even a fantasy. Now, for better or worse, photography has entered the art marketplace big time.

8. How did you break into photography and what advice would you give to aspiring photographers?

I think it was in 1968 that I saw the work of a young photographer, Roger Minick, hung on a wall in a small gallery at UC Berkeley where I was a student. I was deeply moved by the content of the work and the beauty of the prints, and I knew immediately that was what I was supposed to be doing with my life. I had never felt that before. Advice to aspiring photographers—follow your passion and work hard. If you are worried about career or marketplace, find another line of work…

Thanks to the museum for providing the Q+A. And if you’d like detailed exhibition information, Misrach’s bio, or to listen to the podcast lecture given by Richard on this body of work, please visit the museum’s website section devoted to this exemplary body of work by clicking here.

Exhibition: Richard Misrach: On the Beach

Just opened yesterday, the High Museum in Atlanta, Georgia welcomes “On the Beach”, Richard Misrach’s most recent body of work currently on a national tour. This exhibition is the largest collection of photographs from this series ever to be viewed collectively. In a former post you can listen to a lecture Misrach gave on his process and ideology that led to this work. The show runs through August 23rd and more information including a link to a soon to be published catalogue can be found by clicking here.

Jem Southam

Senneville-sur-Fecamp, April. Courtesy Robert Mann Gallery and Charles Isaacs Photographs.

Jem Southam is a British landscape photographer focusing on man and nature’s subtle influence over the existing landscape. He explores his subjects or “sites” over many years, going back to each site over and over as would an archeologist or scientific surveyor in order to take time affected notes. The slight changes he’s able to witness from this approach allows us to view what can easily be taken for granted, the cycles of nature as well as man’s interference in those cycles.

In a series called “Rockfalls”, Southam photographed a section of the coastline of Normandy in northern France where dramatic cliffs change shape on a daily basis. The varying seasons, changes in weather patterns, storms, erosion by both water and rock, and even mineral and chemical content changes in the soil and water can alter the size and shape of these massive cliffs.

The images online don’t do these pictures justice at all. I was lucky enough to view this work on massive scale last year for Southam’s solo show Robert Mann gallery here in New York. Besides being absolutely gorgeous, the work asks for a second look as it commands a certain historical relevance and importance. Go ahead, take a second look.

Vaucottes, February. Courtesy Robert Mann Gallery and Charles Isaacs Photographs.

To see more of Southam’s work please visit the Robert Mann Gallery’s website by clicking here.

Interview with Daniel Shea

A few posts back, I wrote about the work of Daniel Shea, a Chicago based photographer covering environmental topics. I specifically focused on a project titled “Removing Mountains” (click here to read older post), where Shea spent 3 months in Appalachia documenting an extremely destructive form of coal mining called Mountain Top Removal. Shea was kind enough to answer a few questions about the work, process, and his ideas on the subject matter.

How did you first become interested in this subject and why?

First off, thanks for doing this interview! Issues surrounding coal and energy usage in this country are becoming increasingly relevant, and it makes me really happy to see people trying to get the word out. As for the question, at some point in high school I discovered radical politics and alternative models for current economic and social conditions. As you can imagine, an entire world was suddenly opening up for me. In college, while hanging out in the local anarchist bookshop, Red Emma’s , I met a few activists who were part of something called “Mountain Justice Summer.” MJS, I learned, was a summit for activists and community organizers interested in ending current coal-mining practices (in particular mountaintop removal mining) through direct action and public outreach. I almost immediately knew I wanted to travel to the region to explore mountaintop removal and the affected social landscape of Appalachia. I had the opportunity to apply for the Meyer Travelling Fellowship, and I worked on the grant for a year. I ended up getting the grant, and the rest is history.

Do you consider yourself an environmentalist?

This is a hard question to answer. I’ve become increasingly disillusioned with ideological perspectives in recent years, as they tend to filter reality in a way that is generally unproductive. Instead of subscribing to a political ideology, such as environmentalism, veganism, anarchism, feminism (all things I hold dear, in one way or another), I try to embrace an overall state of social awareness. Semantics aside, as someone who is deeply interested in sustaining the future of the natural world and generally looks at industry with profound cynicism (while admittedly still participating in the culture), I am an environmentalist. I have to be careful with my identifying labels, especially while on the road and retaining an air of neutrality. Of course, the perception of neutrality is what’s important, considering I very clearly have opinions on the matter!

You temporarily moved to and lived in a mountain town in Appalachia for 3 months in order to complete this project, how did you approach what you were doing with other members of the home you lived in?

I approached the situation with sincere and 100% genuine reverence. I’ve learned so much from listening to other people over the years, especially in the context of struggle. Coming to this region as a complete outsider was something I was constantly aware of. I reconciled my position of privilege only by gradually increasing my place in the community from passive witness to an involved artist. That being said, again, I had to maintain the perception of neutrality, so I was clearly not in the region as an activist (despite living with some of the most amazing activists I have ever met). I expected my transition into the community to be slow, however the people I lived with, and the folks involved in the fight against MTR were exceedingly warm and welcoming and made my stay there feel like home.

Portraits shape a large part of the work, including miners, some quite young and just starting on their path to a mining career. While this particular type of mining is known to be extremely harmful and devastating to wildlife, ecology, water supply, human health, and more, it also brings a much needed demand of labor and therefore resulting jobs, as well as a way of life passed down from generations before breeding a certain mining culture. How did you broach the controversial topic you were exploring when approaching your subjects in taking their portraits?

This question perhaps touches on exactly why this issue is so complex. Not only is the coal industry the main provider of jobs to an economically devastated region (due to coal, but that is another essay) but the idea of coal (in labor and history) is so ingrained in the culture that it constitutes one of the main fabrics of Appalachian life. Appalachian culture and coal can hardly be separated. We all can speak in grandiose in terms about the environment and industry, but the reality of the situation is that a working man in Appalachia is interested in having a job come next year. That is why I firmly believe that you can’t talk about the devastation of the coal industry and the urgent need to curb all current practices without presenting a clear economic alternative. Thankfully, clean energy alternatives and a push towards local, sustainable economies is often in the dialogue with activists and other citizen advocacy organizations.

What did you find to be the cultural implications of surface mining directly on the Appalachian mining community?

I wish there was an easy and concise way to answer this question! It’s important to understand that in a lot of towns, there was a point where coal was able to employ a large population and bring relative economic prosperity. However, coal, like all fossil fuels, is a finite source for energy, and once a given region’s resources have been extracted, there is often no work left. Coupled with rapidly changing technologies over the last 40 years (which lead to the development of modern incarnations of mining coal, such as mountaintop removal), which need a fraction of the work force once needed, I can safely say that coal has devastated the region economically. In our country and in most parts of the world, economic devastation leads to cultural disintegration on some level. The paradox here of course is that coal is Appalachia’s blessing and curse. It provides the few jobs available to a lot of the region’s underserved communities, but at the same time, the industry is just as responsible for economic devastation. It is both the provider and perhaps the only historically relevant industry to set the path for the rather complex economic issues plaguing the region.

That being said, culture is clearly affected by more elements than economics (although this is the prominent filter by which to speak of all elements of life in America). With mountains literally being destroyed, the fabled relationship Appalachians have with their mountains is being destroyed on the most basic level. How can you be people of the mountains with no mountains?Do you have an official stance on surface mining? I would like to see our country and the rest of the world make the shift to more sustainable modes for harboring and consuming energy. Stripped of all the rhetoric and politics, no one with any degree of credibility or intelligence will tell you that extracting and burning coal is indefinitely sustainable.

What do you believe will be the future for this specific industry?

I don’t have the expertise to really comment on this, but I feel that the coal industry, like most sectors of extraction and unsustainable industries, will soon be forced to redefine their practices. I think realistically, the campaign for “clean coal” will win the uniformed minds of the American people and the unconscionable deep pockets of American government. That’s unfortunate, but I’m admittedly cynical about this type of thing. Again, I’d like to see an end to all coal extraction practices, but that would require a relatively overnight shift in ideology, which I really don’t see happening.

What are you working on next?

I’m in the grant-writing and fund-seeking stages of a project that I would like to execute in Southern Ohio as a follow-up to Removing Mountains. Along the Ohio River are countless coal-fired power plants dotting the landscape. A lot of coal from Appalachia is being shipped to this region for energy conversion. I’d like to spend a month or two living in Southern Ohio, documenting the effects of the coal-burning industry on the landscape and local communities. I’ve already spent some time here, doing preliminary research, but I’m hopefully looking to complete this project in the Fall of this year. There are literally ghost towns surrounding some of these large plants due to the increasing sickness of all the residents in the immediate proximity. It’s a fascinating landscape and very revealing of the way a lot of people in this country live under the shadow of industry. This work, coupled with Removing Mountains, will hopefully be published as a book in 2010.

To view more of Daniel’s work, please visit his website dsheaphoto.net.

Richard Misrach

Dead Animals #1, 1987.

From a background in mathematics, psychology, and community organizing Misrach is a self taught photographer who grew up in the 60s in Berkley, during the start of the first major environmental movement. He is most known for his photographic works in the western American desert between 1981-2001. He was always interested in man’s interference with nature, evident when he photographed military bombing ranges, a space shuttle launch, man made fires and floods, mass graves of dead animals, discarded Playboy magazines. Each set of pictures belong to a larger body of work which link together as a discussion between and amongst each other as part of the larger context of the great American desert.

Atomic Bomb Loading Pit, Wendover Air Force Base, Utah, 1989.

After 9/11, Misrach turned his camera to the beach, photographing scenes of sunbathers and swimmers in often times disturbing postures and positions. By omitting a skyline or horizon line in all the photographs, Misrach forces his subjects out of context, abstracting them, and allows the viewer to imagine these bodies not resting comfortably on soft sand, but falling explosions, or even from the twin towers. He’s explored the idea of omitting skylines before, in his images of the sky and clouds, alluding to infinity and space. The same can be said for “The Beach” pictures, as it seems the figures are floating through space. Misrach shoots with an 8×10 large format camera, thus enabling the images to be printed on an extremely large scale, allowing the figures to be seen up close, something that doesn’t translate on the web or in small print. However, the scale of the figures in relation to the size of the entire photograph, is similar in scale to images caught on video or on camera phones of people jumping from the World Trade Center during 9/11. In a fantastic talk given last year at the Art Institute of Chicago, available to listen to via on line podcast here, Misrach goes through a chronology of his work, finishing with the Beach series. It is interesting to hear that sometimes the ideas behind the work came to Misrach after the fact, that is after he had gone back to look at the work and think about why he was interested in photographing what he was. To view more of Misrach’s work over the years, visit ArtNet here for a comprehensive portfolio.

Untitled, 170-2004. 2004.

Brian Ulrich wins Guggenheim Fellowship

Brian Ulrich has received a prestigious 2009 Guggenheim Fellowship. Ulrich is known on Photography for a Greener Planet for his series titled “Copia”, on the subject of mass consumerism in contemporary American Society. Congratulations to Ulrich and may his work continue to stop us in our tracks. See more here.

Daniel Shea

Sludge or “slurry” is the liquid byproduct from the coal cleaning process.It is stored in underground injections and above-ground massive ponds, like the one seen here.

Coal. The most dangerous fossil fuel we burn for energy. And the most prevalent source of energy domestically here in the United States. It is a dirty, toxic, and destructive substance to both extract and turn into usable energy. One of the most destructive methods of extraction is called surface , prevalent in the Appalachian mountains, where the tops of mountains are literally sliced off in order to access the coal underneath. In addition to destroying the habitat of countless numbers of species that live and rely on it for food, water, and thus survival, the resulting waste from this type of extraction is then dumped into nearby bodies of water. Some rests in newly formed sludge ponds at the crater in the mountain’s peak, other waste quickly travels from nearby streams and rivers into bays, gulfs, and the ocean, contaminating everything in it’s path including drinking water, and adding to the growing dead zones currently surrounding coastal regions. The destroyed land can not be reclaimed, as the topsoil required for fertile pasture is poisoned and doesn’t return to its original state.

The mountaintop removal site on Kayford Mountain near Charleston, W. Va. was nicknamed “Hell’s Gate” by local resident and anti-mountaintop removal activist Larry Gibson.

This violently destructive method of mining was the subject of a major body of work by photographer Daniel Shea. As revealed in his artist statement, “What started as an interest in the modern coal mining process known as mountaintop removal quickly evolved into an extensive study of the social/political institutions surrounding these practices. Above all else, I became interested in surveying the cultural implications of extracting coal from Appalachian Mountains. What I found over the course of the trip was that these coal mining operations had rapidly developed into one of the most destructive and pervasive forms of modern industry in the world.”

When you’re standing in front of a young man 3 years younger than you that has started a life long career in underground coal mines, perspective comes easily. I spent an afternoon at a local Dairy Queen talking to people that were willing to donate a few minutes. Coincidentally I met 3 underground miners, all of whom were new to the job, and all 19 years of age. William Pettry, pictured here, talked to me at the end of his first day underground. He told me he thinks he’ll like the job, and that it pays pretty well.

The rest can be seen in Shea’s quiet, unobtrusive, and patiently taken photographs over a period of three months, resulting in the series aptly titled “Removing Mountains.” The images include landscapes showing surface mining’s physical distress on the land, as well as a glimpse into the neighboring towns, citizens and workers, and general Appalachian culture that both surrounds the practice and is inherently affected by it. To view more of Shea’s work please visit his website by clicking here.

Photographs needed — “Smart Cities” Environmental Project

Photographs needed — “Smart Cities” Environmental Project The Smart Cities Initiative is a multimedia website tracking progress being made today toward smarter, more sustainable cities tomorrow. We are seeking specific images of the top-ranked U.S. cities (listed below) that demonstrate the progress they have made toward urban benchmarks such as clean air and water, green spaces, energy efficiency, and sustainable transportation. This is a non-profit project, and the website is being hosted by a very prominent national environmental group. Since we are unable to pay fees to license images, we are seeking photographers who are willing to donate the use of one or more of their images in support of efforts to create healthier, smarter, more sustainable places for Americans to live.

Images will be posted at only 72 dpi, and photo credits will be provided. This is an opportunity for you to have your photographs viewed by a wide range of policy makers, business leaders, developers, scientists, educators and entrepreneurs, while supporting an initiative to create positive change in our country. For more detailed information on the project and the specific images we are seeking from each city, please email jody@jgroupphoto.com.

These are the cities for which we still need photos: Arlington Heights, IL; Beaverton, OR; Bellingham, WA; Berkeley, CA; Boston, MA; Canton, OH; Charleston, SC; Chicago, IL; Columbus, OH; Dallas, TX; Denton, TX; Denver, CO; Everett, WA; Fayetteville, AR; Fort Collins, CO; Huntsville, AL; Irvine, CA; Laredo, TX; Los Angeles, CA; Madison, WI; Mission Viejo, CA; Mountain View, CA; Nashua, NH; New York, NY; Norwalk, CT; Portland, OR; Redmond, WA; Sacramento, CA; San Diego, CA; San Jose, CA; Santa Rosa, CA; Sarasota, FL; Scottsdale, AZ; Spokane, WA.