Amongst other things over the Christmas break, I have been reviewing a heap of slides and negatives that I took as a teenager during various trips we took in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia. It was the time of the trusty RICOH 35 EFL and Pentax P30n, 35mm film cameras. Below 3 shots of the vast Etosha Pan in Namibia.
It’s my retrospective tribute to Hiroshi Sugimoto. Happy Holiday’s from Australia!
Two photographs selected for Group Exhibition at 1650 Gallery, Echo Park, Los Angeles. See the Exhibition Print and the selected photograph for the Online Annex Photograph above. For further details on the Exhibition please visit 1650 Gallery.
I guess like most people who have their heads down with work deadlines there is the tendancy to sometimes just ‘miss’ things, when something really important just happens to slip past your radar.
And when you eventually stop and take it in, and actually ‘get it’ you wonder how on earth you had hadn’t known about it sooner? Maybe you missed the News that night, TV coverage or Tweet…or maybe you watched it, but in a blur of media channel hopping one night – it didn’t stick?
The ‘Pacific Garbage Patch is one of those things for me. I had heard of it, I had googled it, watched a few you tube clips, and thought to myself something really really must be done about this huge amount of garbage floating around the North Pacific. This especially, as I had spent almost a month in Hawaii a few years ago and couldn’t reconcile plastic with the remoteness and beauty of the Hawaiian Islands.
Then I guess like can happen to most of us, it slowly slipped off my agenda as I got busy again. That was until I randomly came across this article on the Environmental News Network entitled: Birds and the Great Pacific Garbage Patch
Enter the work of photographer Chris Jordan & his team at Midway.
Copyright Chris Jordan - Midway: Message from the Gyre
I followed up by researching some of Chris Jordan’s photographic work on the Midway Atoll and have to admit being deeply impacted on what I saw and read on the links below. I implore you to take 5 minutes read the text, look at the images and watch the movie clips. Hopefully it will impact you in the same way.
“On Midway Atoll, a remote cluster of islands more than 2000 miles from the nearest continent, the detritus of our mass consumption surfaces in an astonishing place: inside the stomachs of thousands of dead baby albatrosses. The nesting chicks are fed lethal quantities of plastic by their parents, who mistake the floating trash for food as they forage over the vast polluted Pacific Ocean.
For me, kneeling over their carcasses is like looking into a macabre mirror. These birds reflect back an appallingly emblematic result of the collective trance of our consumerism and runaway industrial growth. Like the albatross, we first-world humans find ourselves lacking the ability to discern anymore what is nourishing from what is toxic to our lives and our spirits. Choked to death on our waste, the mythical albatross calls upon us to recognize that our greatest challenge lies not out there, but in here.”
From Chris Jordan’s Website http://www.chrisjordan.com
See the Photographs: Message from the Gyre
Copyright Chris Jordan - Midway: Message from the Gyre
Copyright Chris Jordan - Midway: Message from the Gyre
Copyright Chris Jordan - Midway: Message from the Gyre
Chris’ short movie trailer that must be watched can be viewed here:Midway
MIDWAY : trailer : a film by Chris Jordan from Midway on Vimeo.
“In the Greek mythology, Sisyphus was a king who was cursed to roll a huge boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll back down, and to repeat this throughout eternity.
A beach cleanup on Midway Atoll made us feel just like Sisyphus.There are millions of tons of plastics present in our oceans, and these are constantly fragmenting into smaller and smaller pieces which are scattered throughout the water column and present, in different densities, throughout all the world’s oceans. Contrary to what many people believe, there are no visible islands of trash anywhere –even if some areas, the gyres, accumulate higher densities of plastic pollution. In actuality, what is happening is much more complex and scary: our oceans are becoming a planetary soup laced with plastic.
To make thing worse, these tiny pieces of plastic are extremely powerful chemical accumulators for organic persistent pollutants present in ambient sea water such as DDE’s and PCB’s. The whole food chain, from filtering invertebrates to marine mammals are eating plastic and /or other animals who have plastic in them. This means that we are. Like the albatrosses on Midway, we carry the garbage patch inside of us.
Cleaning up this mess is not feasible, technically or economically. Even if all the boats in the world were put to the task somehow, the cleanup would not only remove the plastics but also the plankton, which is the base of the food chain, and is responsible for capturing half of the CO2 of our atmosphere and generating half of the oxygen we need to breathe.
But even if this problem was solved too somehow, the amount of plastic that we could capture, at an immense cost, would be a drop in the bucket as compared to the amount that flows into the ocean every day. No matter how hard we push, in terms of technology or money, the boulder will be rolling back down the hill, throughout eternity, unless we stop putting more plastics into our environment.
The good news is that we can do this. We can do this now. We need to start a social movement that spreads virally and creates a critical mass of concerned citizens who pledge to move away from our disposable habits, and who raise their voice to reject and reverse a throwaway culture that might be profitable, but whose consequences are intolerable.”
From Manuel Maqueda.(Used with permission from this link: http://vimeo.com/8177268 )
I am left wondering; How on earth, can the world at large let this continue?
We need to be affected and moved to do something about this.
Having asked friends from Cape Town, London and New York if they had even heard about this, the response was unfortunately the same. NO.
So apart from the obvious action, to create awareness…blog, tweet, email, etc…to get the word out. We just have to stop buying and using disposable plastic.
(To quote Manuel in an email response to me): ‘Plastic pollution needs to be stopped at source, by refusing single use and disposable plastics.’
To make a small impact to an enormous problem, please visit and support the links below:
Chris Jordan’s website and contact info: www.ChrisJordan.com
Midway Project blog, team details, photos, videos: www.MidwayJourney.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/pages/Midway-Journey/117981432917
Donate: www.razoo.com/story/MidwayJourney
*Images and text are used with permission.
And finally for the sceptics…it’s not setup: http://vimeo.com/6640042
I am very pleased to have recently had a series of my photographs featured on the contemporary landscape photography platform, Urbanautica. You can read the accompanying text and see the featured images on the Urbanautica site or alternatively visit Urbanautica’s facebook page.
I have included the introductory text by Steve Bisson, Urbanautica founder below, as well as a few thumbnails.
DORP*
DORP*
_Statement
The series studies the architectural aesthetic created by the need for physical and economic survival in ‘small town’ rural South Africa.
In Adelaide (Eastern Cape) and countless other poor provincial towns like it, the traditional western notion of home within an urban context has become altered by the need for economic and personal survival. Homes, shops and places of business have security bars over the doors, windows and patios, creating almost ‘zoo-like’ enclosures.
Often windows and doors are removed to the absolute functional minimalism to ensure security. Allowing a sense of normal ‘function’ within the dwelling itself, the resultant net effect on the urbanscape becomes quickly self evident.
The street effectively becoming lined with ‘human cages’ for living and shopping, the latter, with no promotional budget, showcase the veneer of local advertising. An attempt at economic sustainability.
*Title from the Afrikaans phrase ‘DORP’ meaning village/small town. The images were captured in and around the small rural town of Adelaide, Eastern Cape.
This is an ongoing photographic exploration.
To view the series on my own website please follow this link.
The Dispatcher - Ryan David Jahn
I have wanted to do a brief post about Pieter Hugo’s Permanent Error since seeing the BJP Article back in July this year and just somehow never got to it until now. The photograph of the young man in the Agbogbloshie market is continually and uncomfortably haunting.
A very relevant series of work from a very talented photographer. The book can be ordered here.
If you happen to find yourself in Amsterdam between now and September you might want to go and see the Anton Corbijn – inwards and onwards exhibition at Foam. For along time one of my favourite photographers.
Fog on the Tyne
Bestselling author, Bernard O’Mahoney’s new book, Fog on the Tyne features Douglas Mark Black’s photography on the cover.
Douglas Mark Black’s photography features on the cover of Holt & Holt’s book Hartslag.
HARTSLAG
The Pinnacles, Nambung National Park, Western Australia
The Pinnacles, Nambung National Park, Western Australia
The Pinnacles, Nambung National Park, Western Australia
Taken at sunset in the centre of the Park, this and others images from the spectacular Pinnacles Desert to soon be added to the stock collection, here: x
At last the ‘new’ website is ready – so the focus now can return to photography.
www.douglasmarkblack.com
A summary of work can be viewed on the links below:
_FINE ART
DORP*
Decay
Abandoned
Still
Flux
Dust
_STOCK
Figure
Conceptual
Destination
I recently came accross some of the scariest scarecrows that I have ever seen when driving past one of those kid-friendly animal farms. How can you expect a child to hand feed a kangaroo with these fellows looking over your shoulder?
The T-Shirt read ‘Transylvanian Hunger’… not a crow in sight.
Strange Companions
DAGBEHANDELING – FRANCK THILLIEZ.
New cover image by Douglas Mark Black.
DAGBEHANDELING - FRANCK THILLIEZ
The edited gallery and statement for my recent work The Art of Decay is now live on the site. This can be read below, and the full series of images viewed on the site here.
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What happens to an object, once it is discarded?
A non-organic, non-biodegradable, object?
What happens to the packaging (or container) that encloses such an object?
What happens when the negative impact of the discarded packaging is worse than the perceived beneficial impact of the object or commodity itself?
What if the object is an oil derivative? And the packaging is steel?
Is there art in the process of humanity’s own self destruction?
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On Sunday I had the privilege of visiting the Nick Brandt photographic exhibition ON THIS EARTH, A SHADOW FALLS at the Gadfly Gallery in Dalkeith, Perth, WA.
I have been a fan of Nick’s work for some time now but have never had the opportunity to see the prints in a gallery setting.
I was struck on many levels by the exhibition.
As a photographer interested in the commercial aspect (of the creation of fine art) I think Nick has created a body of work that is without question both beautiful, (and therefore appealing en-mass to the buyer) and financially lucrative (something to aspire to), with his consistent application of a unique technical approach re-enforcing the strength of his collection and therefore the value.
As a photographer too, I am struck by both his proximity to these animals and unique way in which he has photographed them. Having myself, on many occasions, been close to African wildlife in varying degrees of comfort or discomfort…the latter being charged, on foot, by an unhappy African Elephant in the Mana Pools Valley (Zimbabwe), I can attest to the fact that to take pictures like this is not something easily achieved.
As a ‘lover of the great outdoors’, Nick has made the beauty of Kenya accessible and most importantly (evolutionary debates aside) Nick has given his art and his work meaning in the creation and support of biglifeafrica.org.
The poaching of these magnificent animals is not only totally irresponsible and short-sighted but bordering on evil. The shadow that falls on this earth is indeed dark…
As I have found with many of the truly great photographers, their work has meaning beyond self glorification. Take James Natchwey or Yann Bertrand for example.
This is the arena where I believe you create a legacy and make a difference with the short time one is given on God’s Earth. Nick Brandt for what its worth I applaud your efforts and wish you immensely more success as you make a difference.
On This Earth A Shadow Falls
The exhibition closes on the 18th, make time to see it. Further details here. And if you cannot get there buy the signed book (see above), proceeds go to charity and it will be worth every cent.
3 part series of video lectures by Andrew L. Moore.
Brilliant.
ANDREW MOORE: PHOTOGRAPHS Part 1
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Originally seen on PIC’s Noticeboard. Thanks.
