Local photographer to chronicle community for national Earth Day

With at least three Earth Day events planned in the region this month, there’s plenty of venues to show your support and commitment and many opportunities to get involved. Locally, Spokane’s celebration takes place Saturday, April 17, as does Coeur d’Alene’s. Earth Day Sandpoint is the following Saturday. Around the world, there are hundreds of similar celebrations in April – possibly more so than past years. This may be due to increased attention on our role in greater eco-systems or growing efforts to change local, national and global policies on topics like climate change and fuel sources. Simple timing may play a part too – 2010 is the 40th year since the first official Earth Day. To commemorate the occasion, an official Earth Day celebration and Climate Rally is planned in Washington, D.C. Sunday, April 25. The Earth Day Network and more than 100 partner organizations plan to gather at the National Mall and request that Congress tackle climate and clean energy legislation. Paul Haeder, one of the coordinators of Earth Day Spokane, said the D.C. event will include a Jumbotron screen showing how Earth Day 2010 is being or has been celebrated around the country. Since Spokane’s is one of the earlier celebrations on the 2010 calendar, Haeder said national Earth Day officials have requested photos from our event and permission to display them throughout the celebration. One of the individuals tasked with documenting the Spokane event is Jesse Swanson. For the past few months, the 21-year-old has been photographing interesting aspects of our community prior to the event and plans to continue to do afterward. This includes land use, transportation, arts and culture, good and bad sustainable practices, the urban-suburban interface, and the suburban-rural interface. Working with Haeder, Swanson has been searching for ways to illustrate the “Five Es” that are being focused on at this year’s Earth Day Spokane event: ecology, equity, energy, economy and education. Swanson is a graduate of Spokane Falls Community College’s photography program, a University High School graduate and is currently working on digitizing the work of photographer Charlie Gurche. “I take pictures of stuff that catches my attention,” he said. He became interested in photography in high school while taking art and photography classes side by side, and seeing how both disciplines can coalesce. “I’m 21 now and I love to travel and backpack and that’s what I’m planning on doing for the next period of my life,” Swanson said. “I’ve lived in Spokane since I was 2 and I definitely have a love/hate relationship with it.”