Environmental photography

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Northern gannets on Heligoland with nests made from old nets. At the bottom right is a dead gannet that was caught in a net.

Environmental Photography (rare nature photography , Eng. Conservation photography ) is a genre of photography that deals with photojournalistic means for protecting the environment begins. Environmental photography extends nature photography to include the purposeful aspect of environmental protection and in this way creates image materials that are intended to induce the viewer to stand up for the preservation of nature .

style

In the past, environmental photography was already part of the work of photographers. It can be found in landscape photography, nature photography, industrial photography and other genres.

To distinguish environmental photography from nature photography, the American National Geographic photographer Joel Sartore noted : “The nature photo shows a butterfly on a beautiful flower. The environmental photo shows the same motif, only with a bulldozer in the background approaching both of them. "

Environmental photography in today's modern sense is a relatively young genre of photography, although its beginnings go back to the 19th century. In 2005 the International League of Conservation Photographers was founded by the Mexican-American environmental photographer Cristina Mittermeier as an interest group for environmental photographers . Today this is considered the official establishment of environmental photography as an independent discipline.

reception

Environmental photographs play a major role in the documentation of climatic changes or changes in flora and fauna. Example: Melting alpine glaciers or on the polar caps are photographed at time intervals all over the world in order to document the decrease in glacier mass. These indicators of climate change are important for scientific analyzes, but just as important for media exploitation. Objects are of course also other phenomena, such as forest fires, floods or strong weather events. Topics such as ship dismantling in Chittagong , environmental pollution , methods of agriculture or industrial influences are also photographed.

One of the main tasks of the genre lies in the media effect of environmental photography.

history

Photographers like Carleton Watkins exerted influence on Congress with their photographic images of the American West (here: Merced River, Yosemite Valley , around 1865)

Beginnings

The American photographers Carleton Watkins (1829–1916) and William Henry Jackson (1843–1942) are considered early pioneers of environmental photography. Both of them had a considerable influence on the decisions of the US Congress to establish Yosemite National Park (1864) and Yellowstone National Park (1872) through their pictures taken in the second half of the 19th century .

The aspects of an industry-critical industrial photography of the 19th century, as quoted in Jakob Tuggener’s work , can also be counted among early representatives of the genre.

20th century to 1945

In the 20th century, the importance of environmental photography in the United States grew through the work of Ansel Adams (1902–1984), among other things . Although the Sierra Club , which Adams joined in 1919, was one of the few organizations to use the term "conservation photography", environmental photography lacked recognition as a genre in its own right. Particularly in comparison with social documentary photography , environmental photography seemed to deal with less important topics. The French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004) said: "The world is about to fall to pieces and people like Adams and Weston are photographing rocks!"

December 24th, 1968: The first picture of the rise of the earth above the lunar horizon, taken by Bill Anders

In the spring of 1941, Ansel Adams received a letter from the then US Secretary of the Interior, Harold L. Ickes, requesting that he photograph the national parks in the United States . He traveled to Carlsbad Caverns National Park to start taking photos for the US Department of the Interior. During the trip he recorded from the cliff dwellings of the Anasazi in Mesa Verde National Park or from the Adobe - Pueblos of Acoma , also felt Adams in his own way the historical photographs of Timothy H. O'Sullivan after which this already in 1873 in Canyon de Chelly had made. In the summer of 1942, the photographer continued his extensive photo excursion for the government through various national parks : he photographed the geysers of Yellowstone National Park and stopped in Rocky Mountain National Park in Glacier National Park and finally in Mount McKinley National Park (today Denali National Park ). Due to the war, the Ministry's project was discontinued. These photos became icons of environmental photography in later exhibitions because they showed Americans in the cities what the national parks in the deserted western United States looked like.

20th century from 1945

A defining iconographic image was the image " Earthrise " from December 24, 1969. It was taken from NASA's Apollo 8 spacecraft , rather by chance by William Anders , with a Hasselblad 500 camera . It shows the rise of planet Earth taken from a lunar orbit. The Time Magazine took Earthrise in its selection of "100 most influential photographs of history" link. The curators wrote: "The picture is our first colored view of the earth from outside and it has contributed to the development of the environmental movement ." In addition, "Earthrise" showed people that humanity in a cold and dangerous cosmos was " very good "go.

21st century

Cristina Mittermeier in 2009

The founding of the International League of Conservation Photographers (ILCP) by the Mexican-American environmental photographer Cristina Mittermeier in 2005 is now considered the official establishment of environmental photography as a separate discipline. Mittermeier gathered more than 40 environmental photographers at the 8th World Wilderness Congress in Anchorage , Alaska , for a symposium and together with them founded the ILCP as a lobby group and independent non-profit organization . Since then, the ILCP has been organizing photo expeditions and supporting environmental groups by licensing ILCP photographers' images.

The works of the Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado , who also thematized the social aspects caused by changes in the environment, received great public attention . His photo report from 1986 about voluntarily hard-working gold miners in the Brazilian gold mine Serra Pelada , whose working conditions seem medieval, has become famous . In April 1991, he photographed the oil wells set on fire by Saddam Hussein's troops in Kuwait during the second Gulf War for the New York Times Magazine and the subsequent extinguishing work. For this work Salgado later received the Oskar Barnack Award from the World Press Photo Foundation . In 1992 Salgado was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . Salgado has been working on the Genesis project since 2004, documenting untouched landscapes and their flora and fauna. After nine years of work on this project, the Natural History Museum in London showed a selection of 250 photos in 2013 and published a large-format illustrated book designed by his wife.

The reception of environmental photography can also be found in awards such as the World Press Photo of the World Press Photo Foundation, which repeatedly announces works from the thematic area.

Examples (selection)

  • The Australian photographer Peter Dombrovskis used his photos in the 1980s to preserve the Tasmanian rivers. In particular, his photo Morning Mist, Rock Island Bend, Franklin River was printed in numerous newspapers in the wake of the controversy surrounding the construction of the Franklin Dam and in this way contributed to the prevention of the construction project and thus to one of the greatest successes of the Australian environmental movement.
  • The Chinese photographer Xi Zhinong documented mid-1990s, the lifestyle of the Golden Monkey noses , one in central China endemic species of ape. While working in China, he discovered that the Dêqên region administration was involved in the illegal logging of mountain forests. His campaign to protect the species is now seen as the first environmental protection initiative that forced the Chinese government to give in.
  • With his photos, the American photographer Michael "Nick" Nichols supported, among other things, the work of Jane Goodall to preserve the habitats of primates and that of the wildlife biologist Michael Fay to save elephants in Chad . His photo project MegaTransect , carried out in 1999, generated international attention for the protection of African animal species and ultimately led to the creation of national parks by Omar Bongo , President of the Republic of Gabon .

Well-known environmental photographers

literature

Descriptive literature

  • Carlton Ward Jr .: Conservation Photography , PhD, University of Florida, [Gainesville] 2008.
  • Boyd Norton: Conservation Photography Handbook: How to Save the World One Photo at a Time , Buffalo, NY 2016, ISBN 978-1-60895-987-7 .

Illustrated books

Web links

Commons : Environmental Photography  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ "The nature photograph shows a butterfly on a pretty flower. The conservation photograph shows the same thing, but with a bulldozer coming at it in the background. ”, Quoted here from Natasha Little, What makes a good conservation photograph , blog of the Royal Society of Biology of April 13, 2016, last accessed on April 24, 2016 December 2016.
  2. ^ Carlton Ward Jr., Conservation Photography , Dissertation, University of Florida, [Gainesville] 2008, pp. 17f.
  3. ↑ On this and the following Ward, Conservation Photography , p. 18.
  4. ↑ "The world is going to pieces and people like Adams and [Edward] Weston are photographing rocks!", Quoted here from Ward, Conservation Photography , p. 19.
  5. ↑ Andrew Chaikin: Who Took the Legendary Earthrise Photo From Apollo 8? In: The Smithsonian Institution (Ed.): Smithsonian Magazine . tape 2018 , January, January 2018, ISSN  0037-7333 (American English, Who Took the Legendary Earthrise Photo From Apollo 8? [Accessed January 19, 2019]).
  6. ↑ Editor: Earthrise. In: www.100photos.time.com/. New York Times, accessed December 21, 2019 .
  7. ↑ On this and the following Ward, Conservation Photography , pp. 54–57.
  8. ^ Sebastião Salgado: When the Oil Fields Burned. In: New York Times , April 8, 2016.
  9. ↑ Video interview: Photographer Sebastião Salgado presents his epic new monograph Kuwait: A Desert on Fire. In: Taschen Verlag  / YouTube , November 24, 2016, 2:46 min.
  10. ↑ 1992 Photo Contest, Oskar Barnack Award, Stories, Individual awards. In: World Press Photo Foundation , accessed October 20, 2019.
  11. ↑ Genesis. In: Amazonas Images , (photos disabled).
  12. ^ Phil Coomes: Sebastiao Salgado's Genesis project. In: BBC , (English), November 3, 2011, with photo series.
  13. ^ Exhibition: Sebastião Salgado: Genesis. ( Memento from August 28, 2013 in the Internet Archive ). In: Natural History Museum , 2013.
  14. ↑ Video: Genesis by Sebastião Salgado - Taschen Verlag. In: Redaktion42  / YouTube , May 16, 2013, 7 min.
  15. ^ Ward, Conservation Photography , p. 21.
  16. ^ Ward, Conservation Photography , pp. 22f.
  17. ^ Ward, Conservation Photography , p. 23 f.