Photography of Change

Photography has been one of the key forms of art and expression applied to the environmental movement on so many levels. From W. Eugene Smith’s work in Japan on the mercury poisonings of the children of Minamata, to Ansel Adams’s sweep of Yosemite, and the hundreds of photographers who have made light and energy and wild life their avocations, and passions, photography has opened a window to environmental awareness and ecological activism. Jane Goodall first went to Gombe to study primates, and with the aid of a husband who photographed and filmed her unique work with apes, Baron Hugo van Lawick, her work became assessable because of the lens interpreting her work and the lives and culture of apes. Photography is what created the impetus of the Sierra Club’s birth with Ansel Adams and John Muir leading the charge in tying visual beauty, the panorama of ecology and nature to the American mindset of open valleys, tall mountains and boundless forests. From Michael Fay’s mega transect across Africa documented by Michael Nichols in National Geographic, to the award-winning photography in the work of Brent Stirton’s story on murdered gorillas in the Congo in Newsweek, environmental photography has covered many facets, moving to the anthropocentric leanings of seeing environment and nature from our myopic point of view, that is, emoting sympathy to our own vulnerability and the huge pressures and collapses our environment faces. Agent Orange’s eco-cide effects were documented in Viet Nam by Philip Jones Griffith, much the same way Eugene Smith captures the twisted bodies and vacant minds of the poisoned people of Minamata. Now, Chris Jordan shows the huge impacts of consumption in his grand digitized work. “Ecotopia” was an exhibition put on by the International Center for Photography in New York tackling all sorts of environmental challenges dovetailed to photographers’ roles – from Alessandra Sanquinetti’s farm animals photo-documentary, to the ravages of mining by Raymond Meeks, photography is now prodding the push and pull of nature and society in a delicate balance to reach some sort of artificial equilibrium to manage or steward nature. Even the war on nature is what we can expect of photography’s exposure now. Killing wolves in Idaho is the next story, showing the people, the land, the victims of this mentality. Let it be known — It was photography that convinced Abraham Lincoln to preserve Yosemite National Park. Philip Hyde and Martin Litton illustrated Wallace Stegner’s work, “This is Dinosaur,” preventing the construction of dams there. Spokane Falls Community College graduate, Jesse Swanson, works to evoke that fourth big wave of photography that captures the lament and the lingering work we have to undertake to bring the world back to some balance – activism through the print. It’s Jesse’s work in fine arts or any thematic arena that will speak to the ecological, spiritual, scientific processes our cultures have to join in on to create balance, not just mitigation. Within the context of living lighter and respecting all parts embodied in Aldo Leopold’s land ethic. Jesse looks for the soul craft of ideas in the sway of shadow and the upsurge of light, yet he embraces the technology of digital morphing. His vision is a continuation of the work of his predecessors who looked at the fabric of light and depth of field and fractured shapes to evoke meaning and a sense of adoration of life and rethinking of perspective. Spokane is lucky to call Jesse one of its own. His work shall live on in the mind and heart of the movement, whichever one hitches up to his work.