"Effects that scientists had predicted in the past would result from global climate change are now occurring: loss of sea ice, accelerated sea level rise and longer, more intense heat waves." --NASA
John Moore / Getty Images
They’re calling it a “takeover.” Every week through the first week of 2015, the International Center of Photography(ICP) will feature photographs focused on “subjects related to climate change” from a different photographer or member of the scientific community. The launch of this social media campaign was announced on Oct. 8 in The Wall Street Journal.
The launch is part of this year’s fall program at ICP. The program highlights the power that photography has, as well as its role in the realm of climate change. Last week, co-founder of ICP, Ron Haviv began by posting beautiful andstark images of the aftermath of illegal mining in Peru, mining that has decimated pristine rainforest that used to exist there 25 years ago.
One image shows an owner looking over his gold mine. He looks over a destroyed land, dried up and oxidized with rifts in the earth where mining has occurred. Other images show abandoned mines, miners, and the desolation that the mining causes.
Each image posted for this campaign comes with commentary which is meant to encourage social discussion. The director of communications at ICP, Krishna Knabe said, “It’s a platform. . .for ideas and engagement. The person posting is creating their own context for their image and can discuss it directly with the audience. That’s not always possible in other venues.”
ICP isn’t the only place where photographers are capturing the effects of climate change in order to instigate conversation or in the very least, emotional response. Slate wrote just last month about David Benjamin Sherry who has been taking pictures over the last ten years of the changing landscape in places such as Yosemite National Park. His images use a special process that enhances ‘devastating’ landscapes in order to make the viewer really experience what is going on. “The color acts as a vehicle to emotional response and intensity that is already in the landscape,” he said. “That’s my intention of it, a type of enhanced reality.”
Many other photographers are also hosting exhibitions and talks and it seems that people are ready for them. This picture certainly proves this case. It shows a view of the thousands of demonstrators who marched down Sixth Avenue in New York City for the People’s Climate March on September 21, 2014.
More conversations and action need to take place in the wake of climate change. Take it from the ICP Executive Director, Mark Lubell. “Climate change is one of the most pressing issues of the 21st century,” he said and social media tools such as Instagram are powerful in their reach and the way that they open people up for conversation on pressing topics like climate change and other global issues.
*originally published on the now defunct Examiner.com
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