From 1971 to 1977, the Environmental Protection Agency asked freelance photographers to shoot images related to environmental issues that were overwhelming the turbulent ’70s. The Documerica project is a fascinating look at how various communities across America coped with the crises that plagued their small towns and big cities. While there are a fair share of disturbing moments in the striking photo series, there’s also a lot of beauty amongst the chaos. Click through to see a smoggy New York skyline that looks like sweet, perfumed death, one of the earliest electric cars, and indulge your love of dirty subway scenes. Read More »
Photographer J. Henry Fair’s work might remind you of paintings by Abstract Expressionists like Willem De Kooning or Clyfford Still, but unfortunately for the health of our planet, it’s not. His vivid, aerial snapshots, which document the devastated landscapes left behind by industrial processes and environmental pollution, are totally real — and in most cases, incredibly beautiful. Click through to preview some of the images currently on display at the Gerald Peters Gallery in New York, and if you like what you see, be sure to check out The Day After Tomorrow: Images of Our Earth in Crisis, a book of Fair’s photographs scheduled for release later this month.
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An ambitious video time-capsule project, One Day on Earth calls on people from around the globe to document the dizzying diversity of life on our planet on October 10, 2010.
With the support of the UN Development Program, professional filmmakers are joining villagers, artists, activists, students, scientists, and soldiers from nearly 200 countries in creating video portraits to share, educate, and inspire. There’s a searchable web archive and a feature documentary in the works, and participation is free and open to all — so start thinking about what you’d like to add to the mix.
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Artist Gregory Euclide builds mixed-media pieces about man’s effect on nature from the very Styrofoam, resin, metal, stones, wood, and grass in question.
Euclide’s sculptural paintings start out as landscape drawings, depicting fancifully detailed wooded vistas and pastoral riverbeds polluted through human carelessness. Working on these compositional foundations, he uses found materials from nature and industry to construct low-relief sculptures that become semi-literal replicas of that which they seek to represent.
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National Geographic puts a new spin on a classic subject, using cutting-edge photographic technology to build a sweeping portfolio of the past and future of water on Earth.
From agriculture, industry, and religion to conservation, commerce, and mythology, no aspect of human life is unaffected by the presence — or increasingly, the absence — of fresh water. Water: Our Thirsty World, a special issue of NatGeo and related exhibition at LA’s Annenberg Space for Photography, tackles this fluid topic in light of dire resource-war scenarios and nature’s evaporating majesty.
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For nearly three years, Environmental Graffiti has provided fans of the offbeat and environmentalists with an online destination for inspiring, believe-it-or-not content.
Based in the UK, the site provides a range that is nothing short of stupendous, with posts on everything from bamboo architecture and the most psychedelic river on Earth (located in Colombia’s Sierra de la Macarena) to the long history of gunpowder weaponry. Eye-catching photo galleries and videos supplement fascinating lists, such as the 35 greatest works of reverse graffiti and the world’s most terrifying spiral staircases.
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Artist and photographer Chris Jordan examines the bad habits of human consumption with work that depicts trash in all its incarnations.
From a distance, his collections of bottle caps, bullets, or Barbie parts are pleasantly abstract, though carefully orchestrated in their large-scale, long-zoom formats. As a body of work, Jordan’s photographs and multimedia pieces — combining documentary with staged production — reveal stunning data about the accumulation of stuff, wrapping social commentary in an attractive packaging.
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No Impact Man documents author Colin Beavan and his family’s bid to live in New York City with zero environmental impact for a full year.
Filmmakers Laura Gabbert and Justin Schein follow Beavan, his skeptical wife, and their toddler as they gradually forgo cars, meat, electricity, and even toilet paper in favor of bicycles, root vegetables, and candlelight. This wonderful, briskly told record captures the macro — and micro — discoveries that come with such a radical lifestyle change, as well as the ideological debate around its commercial tie-ins. Read More »
