viz. - environmentalism

Interview with Photographer Maureen R. Drennan

noelradley — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:10:27 +0000

Image credit: From Maureen R. Drennan
H/T to Artist as Citizen Burning Embers Competition

On the Viz. blog September 2009, I discussed Maureen R. Drennan’s photo series "Thin Ice," where Drennan proposes the potential losses to ice fishing with global warming. I recently had an interview with Drennan about "Thin Ice" and being a finalist on the New York Times DotEarth blog/Artist as Citizen Burning Embers Competition. We discussed remote places, the scale of her project, the themes and the arguments of the photos, as well as the intersections of photography and story.

“A small story about a greater problem”: Interview with Maureen R. Drennan

Viz.: I was talking to a colleague about your series of photos. She said that when she thinks about visual rhetoric and the environment, she thinks of Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth.” She was struck by the contrast between “An Inconvenient Truth” as a visual rhetoric piece and what your series of photos are doing.

Drennan: With Al Gore’s movie, he was really trying to hammer home this situation that is imminent, and I think he’s trying to reach as many people as possible. I think it was done very successfully. It was done in a way where a lot of people could understand it. It was accessible, and it was also dynamic and intense. I know my work is not like that. I wouldn’t know how to go about doing that. That would be for a different photographer…I’m not a scientist. I don’t claim to be an expert.

Viz.: How do you think your photos compare to the other visualizations of climate change?

Drennan: I hope this doesn’t come across as self-deprecating. I think [my images] were a little more subtle. It’s not super dynamic, but I think that’s okay. It’s a small story that I think can relate to the big picture. We’re all involved in small stories. It’s what we’re involved in every day. It makes up the big picture. I think other visualizations of climate change are grand and monumental. My pictures aren’t like that. They’re a lot more quiet.

Viz.: Can you describe how you began to take these pictures of ice fishing?

Drennan: I’m from Manhattan, born and raised here in New York. I’m really drawn to remote, beautiful places because it’s so different from what I’m accustomed to. My husband Paul is from Rice Lake, Wisconsin, which is a very small town in northern Wisconsin. When we would go visit his in-laws, I usually wander around and take pictures of the area. I was just really drawn to these beautiful, remote lakes, and the fact that there are these little shacks on the lake. [For people who aren’t from a cold climate, ice-fishing] is sort of a foreign thing. I was really drawn to it…What are they doing out there? Why are there these little houses out there on the lake? I just instinctually wandered out there and started chatting with people and taking their picture and taking photographs of the landscape and the ice shacks.

What was initially so interesting was the community and how tight knit they are: these temporary communities out on the ice. They only last a few months, and people bond. They become so close. It’s like having a cabin in the summer at the lake. It’s a little place—a little refuge that you go to—and you’re friends with the neighbors. You also (for safety reasons) have to be looking out for one another. Even though it’s an isolated activity, there’s also a community aspect.

Viz.: How did your photos become part of the Artist as Citizen project?

Drennan: Even just in the two years that I have been doing this, the season got a little bit shorter. The ice shacks went out later in the winter and came back earlier. It’s way below zero—like 10 degrees below zero and 20 degrees below when the wind picks up—so I spend a lot of time in the shacks talking to people. In talking to people this past winter, people [would say] how the season is changing and the ice is changing…That’s anecdotal. I don’t think [the ice fishers are] studying charts and graphs, but it was interesting to hear. It just got me thinking about these lovely communities and how this is a small story about a greater problem.

For the full interview, click here.

Plastics Pollution and the Death of Albatrosses

noelradley — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 19:45:36 +0000

Image Credit: Chris Jordan with MidwayJourney

H/T Enviro Smith (Enviroart on Twitter)

This video was filmed as part of a project called MidwayJourney, which is documenting the ecological problems of Midway Atoll in the North Pacific. Five artists, headed by multi-media artist Chris Jordan, have stationed themselves on this string of three islands to document the death of albatrosses, who mistake plastic for food and become filled with the plastic waste. The birds eventually die of starvation. Photographed by Jordan and his colleagues, the decaying bodies of the albatrosses dramatically reveal the culprit of this environmental disaster: the collection of plastics with a macabre combination of feather, weathering flesh, beak, and delicate bone.

Image Credit: Chris Jordan

H/T Enviro Smith (Enviroart on Twitter)

The portrayal of plastic is not the first by Jordan. His collections often use manipulated digital photographs to portray the scale of plastic and other commercial and industrial waste products. From Jordan's 2009 project "Running the Numbers II," the two zoomed details (below) help represent the 2.4 million pieces of plastic that enter the earth's waters every day. In this digitally-born pointillism or collage, Jordan uses images of bits and pieces of plastic to create a much larger composite picture of a wave, entitled Gyre 2009 (an 8-by-11 foot image in 3 panels), which you can view on Jordan's site. The iconic beauty of the composite image belies the reality that the elements of the image indicate: the penetration of plastics into the world's oceans. It is the scale of the disaster that Jordan indicates, as well as the pernicious effects of our inability (or unwillingness) to see the underlying causes.

Zoomed Image of Gyre, 2009 by Chris Jordan

H/T DotEarth

In this new project, Jordan has ventured from digital manipulation, however, to new formats. As the captions of the photographs explain, none of the plastic has been manipulated or moved. Depicting the birds with documentary photography and video, as well as writing on their blog, the artists are trying to show the reality of this particular kind of pollution risk in a less-mediated fashion. The affective basis of the video and photographs also seem a departure from the more ironic and conceptual basis of the earlier 2009 series.

Partial Zoomed Image of Gyre, 2009 by Chris Jordan

H/T DotEarth

Indeed, Jordan writes on the mission statement of the MidwayJourney project, "Maybe it is not too ambitious to hope—if we can fully rise to the occasion—that we might be able to co-create a multi-media work of art that tenderly witnesses this middle point that humanity finds itself at right now. And in the eye of the storm—the apex of the Gyre—perhaps our collaborative efforts can create a container forhealing that might have some small effect on the collective choice that is to come."

Story of Stuff Part Deux

Sarah Wagner — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 14:22:18 +0000

Well. So much for being technologically savvy. After telling my students that I couldn’t find her bio anywhere, they hopped on the computer and found it within seconds. “Uh, Mrs. Wagner? I googled Annie Leonard and found her bio, right here on the Story of Stuff site.” In my head I thanked my years of teaching experience for my ability to not know something in front of my class. But anyhow, let me describe this class to you because it really worked well.

As I wrote in the last post, I showed the Story of Stuff in my class because it’s an engaging video with some problems. When we got back to class this past Tuesday, I asked the class to recap the video and then to continue the discussion of its weaker points. The first part of the discussion was more on audience. Because, as they’d pointed out, the narrator’s tone of voice is a bit condescending to them, the students thought maybe the audience could be younger, maybe in middle or high school. But then the vocabulary she used and the nature of the topic led them to dismiss that as an audience. One student suggested that Leonard would want her audience to be those who can make a difference, and he believed that would be people with financial resources at their disposal. A debate ensued over whether those with the luxury of financial security really are the only ones who can create political and social change.

Then another student wondered whether Leonard had really argued a proposal or just a position in this video. Was her intention just education and awareness, or did she want us to do something? We watched the end again and found that she’d proposed that we “unite” and that to find other ways of making changes, we can “click around” on the Story of Stuff website. All proposals. This student agreed that there were proposals but held to his belief that Leonard’s political standpoint might be down the road of “ecosocialism” (a term he used that I haven’t heard before) or even violent revolution.

I asked the class to pair up and discuss how they were going to write a rhetorical analysis on the video, and all of them immediately got online and started looking around. Their level of engagement was higher than I’d seen for any subject. They were on a mission to find out what this woman was doing. In their searches, they found not only her bio, but Leonard’s list of proposals and a Daily Kos article reviewing the video. One of the students looking at her proposals was Mr. Ecosocialism, and he pointed out that two of them confirmed his suspicions about Leonard’s politics. The first was “7. Park your car and walk…and when necessary MARCH!” Yes, it sounds radical, but when reading the subsequent description, we found that she’s suggesting peaceful protests. So much for violent revolution. The second was “9. Recycle your trash…and, recycle your elected officials.” Well, maybe a little peaceful revolution is what she’s going for.

Thursday, the class turned in their rhetorical analyses, and to a person they said that two pages was too short. This, from students who normally were hitting just over a page long on their other ones. I wished I’d used the video earlier as they were just starting in the class. This generation is so visually oriented that it makes sense to use a visual text first. That way, they can draw on what they know already—what makes a good video, a good cartoon, a good internet site? They have something to say at the start, and then they can learn the technical rhetorical terms for their thoughts and ideas rather than assuming it’s all new information. Give them a reason or a connection to calling something “ethos” or “pathos” and its relevance might be just that clearer to them.

The Story of Stuff

Sarah Wagner — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 12:54:36 +0000

So I showed the video “The Story of Stuff” to my rhetoric and writing class this past week. We’re doing the basics in this class—learning how to argue by learning how to analyze others’ arguments. Made by a woman named Annie Leonard, the 20-minute half-animated video details the history of our post-World War II consumer economy.

She describes the linear system of production and consumption, from extraction to disposal and argues that this system can not work in a finite environment. It’s a pithy, funny, engaging piece that seems to be getting a lot of attention. And for my class’ sake, it’s a fantastic example of an argument that shows pathos, ethos and logos in spades.

However, the main reason I was willing to show such a pointedly political video (if I can argue that a strongly environmentalist viewpoint is political) is because the piece also has some problems. There is nowhere on the site that I can find any information about who this woman is, where she’s from, or why she did this piece. I could look up the foundation that supports and holds the copyright, but the point is that it’s not readily accessible. I also don’t know when the piece was made, nor who it was made for. Finally, her facts and figures are not referenced anywhere on the site. Sure, it’s like any writer, if you want to know, look it up. But the technology of the internet allows for citing pretty easily, why not do it?

These points allow for a rich discussion in class—who do you think it was made for? Why? What about the graphics, were they engaging? Are you the audience? The Story of Stuff also allows me to push these young students (most fresh out of high school) to think more about how they think—to use the knowledge they have to inform their reading of the text. What do you trust or distrust in this video? Why? What do you know about the internet and about graphics that can tell you about the audience? Their engagement with this video provides fertile ground for making their analyses meaningful and deeper than they have been so far.