the environment: lecture notes

8/3/2019 The Environment: Lecture Notes

1/17

1


2/17

2


3/17

3


4/17

- passionate visual spokesperson concerning climate change-global temperatures threaten the Antarctic ice to melt- in the last sixty years, the poles have warmed up to more than twice the rateof the rest of the world, while the Antarctica Peninsula has warmed by up tofive times the global average--the poles hold thirty percent of the worlds water, and Antarctica, 90 percentof its fresh water

-melting ice is projected to raise ocean levels as much as twenty feet withinas little as a century, threatening to displace up to 80% of the worlds

population-Within as little as 80 years, 35% of the worlds species will disappear-Polar Bears will be extinct in the North, and many Penguins species willdisappear in the South

4


5/17

-American photographer (1944-) who has portrayed Greenland in particular-For over twenty years I have made the long journey from New York to

Greenland to photograph the giant icebergs that calve off the glacier inIlulissat, a small town on the northwest coast that faces Disco Bay, and

beyond, the Labrador Sea. My first trip to the Arctic was in 1986. Four journeyslater, in 2007, my journeys came to a melancholy end when the giant glacierhad become so diminished in size that icebergs, such as I had known them,

became almost impossible to find.

5


6/17

-Nature transformed through industry is a predominant theme in my work. Iset course to intersect with a contemporary view of the great ages of man;

from stone, to minerals, oil, transportation, silicon, and so on. To make theseideas visible I search for subjects that are rich in detail and scale yet open in

their meaning. Recycling yards, mine tailings, quarries and refineries are allplaces that are outside of our normal experience, yet we partake of theiroutput on a daily basis.

6


7/17

-My images are meant as metaphors to the dilemma of our modern existence;they search for a dialogue between attraction and repulsion, seduction and

fear. We are drawn by desire - a chance at good living, yet we are consciouslyor unconsciously aware that the world is suffering for our success. Our

dependence on nature to provide the materials for our consumption and ourconcern for the health of our planet sets us into an uneasycontradiction (Burtynski)

--notion of a chapter: from extraction, to notion of transportation and the end ofoil

7


8/17

-BP oil spill in thethe Gulf of Mexico oil spill which flowed unabated for threemonths in 2010

-largest accidental marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry-spill stemmed from a sea-floor oil gusher that resulted from the April 20,

2010, explosion of Deepwater Horizon, which drilled on the BP-operatedMacondo Prospect-explosion killed 11 men working on the platform and injured 17 others-on July 15, 2010, the leak was stopped by capping the gushing wellheadafter it had released about 4.9 million barrels of crude oil-an estimated 53,000 barrels per day escaped from the well just before it wascapped.-On September 19, 2010, the relief well process was successfully completed-In August 2011, oil and oil sheen covering several square miles of water werereported surfacing not far from BPs Macondo well-spill caused extensive damage to marine and wildlife habitats and to theGulfs fishing and tourism industries-Mobile Offshore Drilling Unit (MODU), which was owned and operated byTransocean and drilling for BP in the Macondo Prospect oil field

8


9/17

-American photographer (born 1957) whose work takes a look at the profoundcost of oil exploitation in West Africa

-work traces the fifty-year impact of Nigerias relationship to oil interests andthe resulting environmental degradation and community conflicts that haveplagued the region-image of Old Bonny Town on Bonnie Island, where palm oil trade previouslythrived

- now the town is in poverty while the oil and gas companies continue to grow

9


10/17

-first wellhead was tapped in 1958, more than $500 billion dollars of wealthhas been pumped out of the fertile grounds and remote creeks of one of

Africas largest deltas and the world's third largest wetland-petroleum production has caused devastating pollution to the Niger Deltabecause of uninterrupted gas flaring and oil spillage-these operations have destroyed the traditional livelihoods of the Niger Deltaand provided one of the most compelling examples of social and economic

injustice on the planet, juxtaposing the phenomenal wealth produced by the oilindustry against the abject poverty and lack of development for the local

people- oil companies, led by Chevron, Total, Agip and Royal Dutch Shell, havetransformed what was once a waterlogged equatorial forest, stripping away

mangroves to lay 4,500 miles of pipelines, over 150 oil fields and 275 flowstations

10


11/17

- infinite landscape of garbage-garbage dump in Chimalhuacn, Mexico City, which extends up to thehorizon--from distance the work appears abstract (-2m big), and, with its colourfulspots, recalls the drippings of the action paintings by Jackson Pollock-the garbage covers nearly every part of the photography, plastic bags arefloating above the scenery, almost frozen in the air

- large format and the almost endless variety of details pull the beholderdeeper into the picture

-like an archaeologist viewer examines the surface of the garbage to receivefurther information

11


12/17

-Japanese photographer (born 1967)- in China everything is under constant construction, meanwhile tradition andtraditional values seem to disappear-rubbish dumps covered with the 'shield', a green netting, are a ubiquitousphenomenon in China-thoughtful and timely series inspired by traditional Chinese paintings-analogue reworked by computer to create images of rural mountainlandscapes shrouded in the mist

12


13/17

-most circular or rounded window-like compositions floating on a white ground,47 inches square

-neutral backgrounds and compressed spaces suggest traditional Chineselandscape paintings-the works even bear the red signature stamps and collection seals known aschop marks-Yao subtly critiques Chinas willingness to sacrifice its history and despoil theenvironment in its breathtaking sprint to modernization-Yaos pictures also touch on the tradition of the sublime, here with humanityoverwhelmed not by nature but by the forces of commerce and progress andits consequences of waste

13


14/17

-Canadian photographer (born 1951)-book After the Flood documents area of New Orleans affected by HurricaneKatrina- immediate aftermath of the flooding, the demolition of the houses andenvironment of entire communities-photographs of the devastation but also all the objects and the spacebecomes a scene of waste rendered obsolete by natural catostrophy

14


15/17

- When Polidori arrived in New Orleans on September 20, 80% of the citywas still under water. The temperature was close to 90 F and the smell of

rotting flesh and food was putrid. Downed electric cables draped the streetsand sidewalks. Toppled live oaks lay like fallen colossi, except there was no

grandeur to the scene, just despair. Most traffic lights and streetlamps hadlong stopped working, and exhausted relief crews were still discovering andcollecting the dead.

15


16/17

- It has long been my conviction that rooms are both metaphors and catalysts forstates of being, and are thus an insight into the soul of their occupants. We may takea portrait of an individual, and indeed feel many emotions and imagine their

personalities or histories in detail, but I believe that by photographing the interior of anabode we know much more about ones actual personality and personal values. Theinterior spaces that I photographed in New Orleans were still moist from the recedingflood and indeed the stench of organic rot, the sagging carpets, and waterloggedfloorboards made photographing difficult but it was nevertheless important to me torecord for posterity a panorama of mementos of interrupted lives. It is also importantto note that the overwhelming majority of these interiors occupants are still alivetoday, living a different life somewhere else. Together with the exteriors, in which Iattempted to make visual sense of the forces of chaos that threw houses about as ifthey were made of cardboard, these photographic records are offered as a kind ofvisual last rites for life trajectories that are no more.

16


17/17

-In the eleven days following the Chernobyl catastrophe on April 26, 1986,more than 116,000 people were permanently evacuated from the area

surrounding the nuclear power plant-Declared unfit for human habitation, the zones of exclusion includes thetowns of Pripyat and Chernobyl--In May 2001, Robert Polidori photographed what was left behind in this deadzone

-images are haunting documents that present the reader with a rare view ofnot just a disastrous event, but of a place and the people who lived there

-Variety of scenes: burned-out control room of Reactor 4, the unfinishedapartment complexes, ransacked schools, and abandoned nurseries-Nearby, trucks and tanks used in the cleanup efforts rest in an autograveyard, some covered in lead shrouds and others robbed of parts.Houseboats and barges rust in the contaminated waters of the Pripyat River-Foliage grows over the sidewalks and hides the modest homes of the smalltown Chernobyl-captures the faded colors and desolate atmosphere of Pripyat and Chernobylin his large-scale photographs

17

the environment: lecture notes

Documents