Earth Day in Isolation
Photo by Adrian Guerin. “After enough salt has been raked from beneath the warm water, it is shovelled into buckets and hauled across the pond to the mountains of salt at the edge of the plot.”
This is one Earth Day we’re bound to remember. Nature is a humbling and a formidable force whose powers are most easily dampened by rumbling city life and a nine-to-five schedule. Studies show that our bodies' physiology responds positively to being outside. Sitting outside and breathing fresh air — even for just a moment between Zoom calls with your coworkers — can reduce blood pressure, strengthen your immune system, and relieve the stress that this pandemic is indubitably causing you.
After relentless months of bearing the winter’s neurotic weather and soul-crushing darkness, we’ve delightedly made it to spring. However, this Earth Day – April 22nd of 2020 – commonly, an annual event celebrated globally to demonstrate support for environmental protection, couldn’t be more aligned with the core of this celebration.
On this vernal equinox, the vicious spread of the COVID-19 virus and its subsequent inspired panic, has people worldwide sheltering-in-place, working remotely, and halting their habitual lives. Purposefully, or not, this may be the most environmentally conscious Earth Day we’ve had to date. Perhaps, even more beneficial than Earth Day 2016 when the United States, China, and 120 other countries signed the noted Paris Agreement, a historic treaty to protect the environment.
As the pulse of capitalism has been arrested by a pandemic, upending everything from aviation to the economy – scientists are seeing the effects in the tune of staggering statistics. By slowing economic activity, stalling shops, business, plants and factories, carbon dioxide emissions have fallen by 25 percent. In Venice the canals have cleared. In New York, carbon monoxide levels shrank to half their usual March levels. It is clear that individual actions that stop greenhouse gas emissions and pollution yield collective impact - and quickly. Although ominous, the noticeably fast effects of halting our destructive behaviors, is something scientists say could offer necessary lessons for how to prepare — and ideally avoid — the most detrimental impacts of climate change.
Cody Cobb, Blueshift 1, 2018.
This time of unease and bitter uncertainty can also act as a catalyst for immense growth, holding the potential for interrupted creativity. But like all growing pains, it can be quite painful and awkward. The animal in all of us, awakened with spring, is discontented with treeless sidewalks and windowless office spaces. Perhaps the way to release this pent up energy, cannibalizing our psyche, is simply to get outside – of course, safely and distanced from others.
In honor of today’s celebration, we are featuring three distinguished photographers who use nature as their subjects, distinctly and personally, to explore interactions of humans and our environment.
Charlotta Hauksdottir Impression VIII.
The physical space of one's homeland is intimately connected with individual identity, sense of being, and personal history. Charlotta María Hauksdóttir recreates places and scenes, photographing Icelandic landscapes after moving from her home in Iceland to California. Sense of Place: Imprints of Iceland consists of assembled and layered photographs of the artist's estranged homeland. Discontinuity between the layers of photographic paper, and the ambiguous texturizing of human fingerprints to detail each photo, signals the singularity and uniqueness of each place as it parallels our connection with nature.
Charlotta’s creations are moving, transporting you to the extraordinary spectacle of her constructed environment. I can feel the whip of a tight-lipped gust running off the top of a hill, an open-handed slap in the face, warmth rushing down my cheeks. I can smell the sweet, earthy smell of freshly-cut blades, the salt that hangs in the air, the powdery midday breeze carrying the pollen like an outstretched hand.
She mirrors the wildness of the landscape, and our inability to wholly comprehend its grandeur, through intricate manipulation of photographic paper layers – an imitation of the landforms that have developed over millennia. Ultimately, these large-scale compositions speak to individual responsibility and the scale of human impressions upon our environment.
Charlotta Hauksdottir, Topography Study II.
Cody Cobb, a Louisiana-born photographer based in Seattle, aims to capture transitory moments of stillness in nature, devoid of human interaction and interference. For weeks at a time, Cobb traverses the American West to explore untouched wilderness.
“The American West has exposed me to such incredibly diverse landscapes. I can walk along rugged coastlines, glaciated valleys, exposed ridgelines, dense old-growth forests, lava tubes, rivers, deserts, glaciers, canyons, etc. I prefer the more isolated and remote areas but even popular places like Yosemite NP are exciting to me.”
His self-imposed isolation, allows him to more sensitively observe the physical landscape surrounding him and the internal experience of solitude in nature.
Cody Cobb, Slow Reveal, 2018.
The result of this process is evident in his photographs, which are striking in their repose and imposing in their inactivity. Through purposeful guidance of light and geometry, he is able to frame natural structures in stately and ominous ways, capturing the topography as much as the emotion of the land.
"While American landscape photography has been historically tinged with a tendency to capture, stake claim, or make the land a souvenir for the rest of the world to see, Cobb’s practice is humbler. For Cobb, it’s not about conquering the wild and majestic; instead, he submits to a wilderness larger than us all." – Jon Feinstein, Photograph Magazine.
Adrian Guerin, an independent photographer and world-traveler, uses photography as a more literal vehicle for sharing stories. He embarks on several trips each year to engage with local communities, relating parts of their story to the public. In his newest series, Raking salt (and feeding babies) in the crystal ponds of Senegal, he describes how digging, lugging, and breastfeeding are not mutually exclusive tasks. Through his photographs, and photo-journal narrative that accompanies them, he tells the story of salt-harvesting in Senegal, the world’s largest salt producer in west Africa.
Photo by Adrian Guerin. “Each day Adama and her baby daughter head to the salt ponds at Palado, a small village 170km southeast of Dakar, to harvest salt.”
“The more I see of the world, and the more I learn about its people and religions, the more I discover that there’s much more to our story than the picture of destruction and hate we see on the news. My goal is not to suggest that the world is without danger; nor do I suggest that conflict reporting and stories of hardship are not vitally important; they are. Rather, I wish to share my personal experience from over 10 years of roaming the world. You know all about the dangers and stereotypes, so let me offer another perspective.”
Guerin’s passion for travel and exploration have given him the discipline of mindfulness and appreciation for our global community. Fifty years ago, exactly, on April 22, 1970, millions took to the streets on the first Earth Day, demanding clean air and environmental protection. There is not a more apt time to get outside and appreciate this wondrous planet.
You can learn more about Earth Day and how to help build a global movement for change here.
