Chongqing XI, 2007, Chongqing, China

The Prix Pictet is an annual search for photographs that communicate powerful messages of global environmental significance under a broad theme. This year that theme was “Earth”. Nadav Kander was nominated for his series of photos, Yangtze, The Long River Series, 2006-07, documenting the rapidly changing landscape and communities of China’s Yangtze River, from its mouth to source, and this past week he was awarded the prize at FIAC in Paris, which I just happened to be leaving from that day. Sadly I missed the announcement and events that evening, but was nonetheless thrilled at the news.

Chongqing IV (Sunday Picnic), 2006, Chongqing, China

Kofi Annan, the Prix Pictet’s Honorary President while also esteemed Nobel Laureate and former Secretary General of the United Nations, awarded Kander the prize saying that, “The photographs were a compelling call for action to tackle climate change, the most serious humanitarian and environmental challenge facing the world today. Only weeks separate us from the decisive negotiations on climate change in Copenhagen. We are confronted with the vital need to prepare the political momentum necessary for a fair and effective post-Kyoto agreement. The images in front of us remind us of the fragility of our planet and the damage we have already done. When we see these photographs we cannot close our eyes and remain indifferent. Through our actions and voices, we must keep building the pressure to secure urgent action at Copenhagen and beyond.”

Shanghai I, 2006, Shanghai, China

Kander is a British based photographer, one I’ve never had the chance to work with, but have wanted to a number of times. I remember doing an interview with a big time ad agency on the west coast, and Nadav Kander was the first photographer out of my mouth when I was asked which dream photographers I’d like to worth with but haven’t had the privilege of. Kander photographed the Yangtze River from mouth to source, or over 4000 miles of watery arteries running across China. According to his artist statement, he didn’t set out with any pre-conceived notions of the river or its inhabitants– which make up more than all of the people in the entire US– but instead let the landscape do the work for him, and guide the kind of pictures he took as a physical response to the environment. What struck me the most about these images is that despite the presence of people or industry, both creators of commotion and therefore sound, the pictures felt eerily quiet. The color palette of tans and browns that make up the river and smog feel as if sound would simply not exist in that landscape. This is reinforced in the way Kander effectively portrays the sheer size of the river– which directly relates to China’s ever increasing population growth and development—using people against the backdrop of overpasses, industry, and of course water. This makes the Chinese individual seem incredibly small as opposed to the gargantuan amount and speed of development currently taking place.

Bathers, Yibin, Sichuan, 2007, Sichuan, China

While these are just four examples from this body of work, I urge  you not only to explore Kander’s work further by visiting this link to his personal website, but by also reading his moving and straight to the point artist statement which can be found here.

Apologies for the gap in posting, as I’ve been abroad for several weeks, mostly off the grid. During the time on the grid however, I spent a few days in London, on one of which I visited the V+A, the Victoria and Albert Museum. A fantastic design museum from past to present, I was there at the peak of London’s Design Week, and therefore was lucky enough to see several new contemporary and modern exhibitions. I also visited the V+A’s permanent photography collection, which houses a large number of greats whom I admire, along with others I wasn’t as familiar with. An eery image of tree limbs floating in the gloomy mist was one of these.

A UK born and based artist interested in environmentalism from an early age, Nicholas Hughes brings the natural world into his photography as a central subject. In his series titled “In Darkness Visible, Verse 1”, Hughes points his large format view camera at trees that inhabit urban parks in central London, a city of 8 million people. Layering exposures of tree limbs during what appears to be foggy winter nights, Hughes recreates possible glimpses into ancient primeval forests, maybe even like the Belavezhskaya Pushcha, on the borders of Poland and Belarus, the last European primeval forest in existence, currently a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The images are dark, moody, and melancholy. They are also contemplative, in the sense that they weren’t all taken in an ancient forest, but instead, in London’s manufactured green spaces. This idea of wilderness amongst the built environment has always been an essential part of environmentalism. While we truly can not have wild and built coexisting freely, as they are polar opposites, we do not stop trying to incorporate wild elements into our built environment, consistently trying to tame and control that wilderness. Nature of course plays this same game with us as well, in that it uses every opportunity to grow and expand and even encroach wherever it can, sometimes wiping the slate clean altogether as can occur with large natural disasters. It is an ongoing battle that must never be won by either side, but instead, reach a harmonious mutual dependency and equal levels of respect. Whether that is a reality we will see achieved in our lifetime has yet to become clear.

In the meantime, these images bring us to question our relationship with nature, and more specifically, the meaning of nature and wilderness in this modern urban context. We describe small parks as being a part of nature, larger parks as being wild space, yet neither of these terms are accurate. Are we so far from recognizing that we—ourselves– are a part of nature that we now make drawn this distinct line of separation? I see Hughes photographs speaking of beauty, sadness, strangeness even. But I also see them speaking of the fragility inherent in this distinction and separation we have put between ourselves and the natural world. If that separation continues to grow, we have yet to imagine the worst. If we again begin to think of ourselves as a part of nature, with similar importance, and as an integral part of a natural cycle to which we play a huge part (and are no longer contributing our fair share), we can possibly only then begin to come up with realistic and effective solutions to our current environmental crisis. In this way, they are truly haunting in ways other than aesthetically speaking.

Hughes describes the work as such:

“In reaction to media led sensory anaesthetisation, and wearied by empty political rhetoric, my aim was to construct a forest built from accumulated memory and the ghosts of trees. Spending a period of two winters’ visiting public spaces in central London, this work inverts decorative Arcadian layout in an attempt to restore a sense of the natural in the cultivated, somewhat synthetic city ‘wilderness’ spaces.”

To see more of Hughes’ work, please visit his website www.nicholas-hughes.net or his galleries in London and New York.

The Ansel Adams Gallery And Blue Earth “Changing Earth: Photographer’s Call to Action” At Mumm Napa

The Ansel Adams Gallery and Blue Earth are proud to host an inspiring photo exhibit and lecture series featuring our dramatically changing planet titled “Changing Earth: Photographers Call to Action” opening September 19, 2009 at Mumm Napa Fine Art Photography Gallery and running through March 13, 2010.

The Blue Earth Alliance would like to extend an invitation to our friends to join us for a sparkling wine reception at Mumm Napa on September 19 from 6:30-8:30 p.m. marking the opening of the exhibit. The reception and ongoing exhibit are open to the public and offered at no charge.

The exhibit features works from a variety of acclaimed Blue Earth project photographers who document earth’s changing environment and the impact of those changes on society. Blue Earth photographers and projects in the exhibit include: Daniel Beltrá (Amazon: Forest at Risk), Benjamin Drummond & Sara Joy Steele (Facing Climate Change: Global Change. Local People), Stephen Harrison (Visualizing Earth), Anne Marie Musselman (Finding Trust/The Sarvey Wildlife Project), Camille Seaman (Melting Away ? The Last Iceberg), Florian Schulz (Freedom To Roam: Wildlife Corridors), John Trotter (No Agua, No Vida: The Thirsty Colorado River Delta), and Rebecca Norris Webb (The Glass Between Us: Reflections on Urban Creatures).

Mumm Napa Winery is located at 8445 Silverado Trail, Rutherford, CA 94573. Visitor center and fine art photography gallery hours are 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. daily.

Lecture Schedule
Nov. 7th – Drummond/Steele, “Facing Climate Change”
Dec. 5th – Camille Seaman, “Connection and Purpose”
Feb. 6th – Stephen Harrison, “Visualizing Earth”
Mar. 6th – John Trotter, “The Future of the Colorado River”
TBD – Florian Schulz, “Freedom To Roam

Check out the Blue Earth Alliance website for further updates.

From the 2008 TEDtalk, Chris Jordan explains his work and how it aims to connect our everyday actions to the unfathomable statistics we encounter on a daily basis. Approx. 11 minutes in length.

Olivier Jobard, from a 1 year project documenting a 23 year old man’s migration from Camaroon to Spain. For more images and further info, click here.

Motor City. If you’ve never been to Detroit, your assumptions about it– industry centered around the automobile, mostly working class neighborhoods, and rough around the edges– are truer than ever before. Built on the rise and popularity of the automobile along with a boom during industrialization, Detroit put every single last one of its eggs into a completely unsustainable basket. With the continuing decline of the economy, the housing market crisis, and the ultimate collapse of prominent American car manufacturers based there, the city is bordering a fine line on the verge of collapse. If it hasn’t hit that mark already.

It also happens to be a behemoth of a city, roughly the area of San Francisco, Boston, and Manhattan combined. Yet it is grossly underpopulated for it’s relative size. Many are moving out of Detroit due to rising unemployment, increased frequency of foreclosures, and higher costs of living, thus leaving businesses, residents, and sometimes even entire neighborhoods abandoned. The divide between the rich still there, and the poor barely hanging on, continues to grow larger.

“That a once great city could find itself in such great distress, all the while surrounded by such affluence,” fascinated Kevin Bauman, a photographer who considers Detroit his hometown. He has photographed the city for many years, recently turning his camera specifically onto the many abandoned homes on the rise. While the title of this body of work is called “100 Abandoned Houses”, in his artist statement, he confirms it’s somewhere closer to a staggering 12,000.

The photographs are immediately striking first and foremost in their simple composition– geometric lines, a center focused frame, and often symmetrical elements. Bauman remains roughly the same distance from each location he photographs, creating a catalog when viewed in a grid, or focusing your eye on both differences and similarities when viewed one following another sequentially. The images are void of humans, although a car does peak into the frame sometimes– clear metaphors for both the unsustainability of recent years mortgages and resulting foreclosures, as well as Americans’s fascination with cars (in both unnecessary multiples and highly inefficient large sizes), along with the previous American administration’s consistent denial of any problems and refusal to address issues before the onslaught of inevitable crises, most of which we’re currently in.

This is not simply another body of work on decay as beauty, or the aesthetic appeal of deterioration we often find in countless photographs of abandoned buildings. Instead, we find the sum of our collective actions; the outcome of our political, socioeconomic, and environmental choices; and the fatal flaws in a government that answers to corporations over its own citizens.

I urge you to view more of these images on the site dedicated to them, aptly titled 100 Abandoned Houses. To view more of Bauman’s other work please visit his website www.kevinbauman.com. Bauman has released an extremely well priced limited edition set of prints with partial proceeds going to various organizations doing work on rebuilding Detroit. For more details on pricing and to purchase a print, click here.

BP Carson Refinery, California 2007, 70 x 92 inches, from American Power

Mitch Epstein is best known for his photographs of American life. From the demise of his father’s small business, to society’s recreational idiosyncrasies, to the face of a changing New York City, Epstein delivers a style classified somewhere between conceptual and documentary, showing the ordinary in its extraordinary state. His switch from black and white to color photography in the 70s was one of the first to be accepted as “art”, and not just slick advertising, which is what color was used for before that time.

Amos Coal Power Plant, Raymond, West Virginia 2004, 70 x 92 inches, from American Power

Between 2003 and 2009, Epstein photographed the United States landscape and society as it related to energy production. “Energy tourism”– Epstein called it in an artist statement. He set out to photograph fossil fuel, nuclear, as well as green energy production sights, and their affects on the people, life, and environs directly surrounding it. They raise questions not only of western culture and its respective energy use, but also of shifting and often times unbalanced states of power– the power of nature vs. electrical power vs. political power vs. America’s power in terms of the global perspective.

Altamont Pass Wind Farm, California II 2007, 70 x 92 inches, from American Power

Epstein visited 25 states over the past 6 years shooting nuclear power plants, wind farms, coal plants, and the Americans who live with them in their very own backyards. He did, however, encounter several setbacks. First was Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which affected 30% of land in the US used for oil production. More oil refineries line the Gulf Coast than anywhere else in the country. Epstein shifted gears for this area turning his focus from oil production to the coast’s vulnerability in future natural disasters.

Biloxi, Mississippi 2005, 70 x 92 inches, from American Power

For more images and information on American Power and other photographic projects by Mitch Epstein, please visit his website or NYC gallery.

American Power is available for pre-order on Amazon by clicking on the book.

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.’

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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.

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.