“The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera”, Dorothea Lange, Los Angeles Times (13 Aug. 1978)
Photographs today make up a consistent part of our daily life. We see them on adverts, and on our social media, and we take pictures of random bits of our day only to send them immediately to our friends. We scroll down thousands and thousands of pictures just to forget them after a few seconds. Most of them have no meaning for us and disappear right away from our minds. But sometimes, within this endless overflow of images, some images hold the power to stay in our hearts.
Some photographs may affect us either because they open our eyes to a different reality, such as a war in a faraway country, or because they show striking scenes of the reality that we live in. Those images are powerful because, while they might be scary, they might also wake up something within us. They might serve as an epiphany, as a moment of realisation of what is happening in our world, and they might push us towards the desire to make a change. This is happening to many people after seeing photographs about climate change.
For years incredibly talented photographers have been trying to capture the effects that climate change is already having on our planet, reminding us that it is not a theory about the future, but it is a reality that people are already facing. Some viral pictures are allowing people to see the truth about our climate changing, teaching them, in Lange’s words, “how to see without a camera”.
The Pulitzer Prize winner Josh Haner from The New York Times did an incredible job in showing us the catastrophic effect that climate change is causing through his exhibition Carbon’s Casualties, that took place in Hong Kong in February 2020, presented by The New York Times in collaboration with K11 Art Foundation. The exhibition displayed photographs that Haner had been taking since 2015 to document the visible consequences of climate change, such as ecosystems in crisis, lands and populations being engulfed by water, and important historical sites disappearing.
One of the pictures in the exhibition was shot in Kiribati in 2015. It shows the 6-year-old Toobeen Iareko playing in the sea in Betio, South Tarawa. The boy is playing with the rebars of the new sea wall, since the previous one had failed to stop the water during the King Tide, the highest predicted high tide of the year at a coastal location. Thanks to this picture we can understand how dramatic the situation of insular countries is. Not only are they continuously damaged by hurricanes, but they are also threatened by the rising of the sea level that could make them disappear in incredibly soon. Another image, which depicts this life-threatening this situation, is a photograph of Tuvalu’s Minister for Justice, Communication & Foreign Affairs Simon Kofe recording a speech for the UN climate conference in Glasgow COP26.
Tuvalu is another insular state in the Pacific Ocean that is facing the same threats as Kiribati. In his speech, Kofe stated that they are looking for legal ways to keep their status as a country even if their land will get entirely submerged.
The picture had an extraordinary online echo and was widely shared on social media. The authorities of the small country were pleasantly surprised by this sudden notoriety, and Kofe stated “We didn’t think it would go viral as we saw over the last few days. We have been very pleased with that and hopefully that carries the message and emphasises the challenges that we are facing in Tuvalu at the moment”.
Another powerful yet painful image that went around the world through social media is the video of the starving polar bear shot by Paul Nicklen and Cristina Mittermeier. The video shows a malnourished polar bear looking for food in a snowless landscape. The photographers shared it on their social media channels, and it went immediately viral, catching the attention of National Geographic. However, the video sparked some controversy as it was later proved that, although polar bears are dying because of climate change and the ice melting, there was no connection between climate change and the situation of that certain bear. “Photographer Paul Nicklen and I are on a mission to capture images that communicate the urgency of climate change. Documenting its effects on wildlife hasn’t been easy. With this image, we thought we had found a way to help people imagine what the future of climate change might look like”, Mittermeier stated in her article for National Geographic. And although we don’t know whether the bear was starving because of climate change, the video was eye-opening for many people, as it can make them imagine what life could be like for many polar bears in the future if ice keeps melting and sea levels keep rising.
The three images in this article are not isolated cases. Pictures like these are taken every day, as we are already witnessing the consequences of climate change in our daily life. Although they might make us feel angry, heart-broken, and hopeless, we can learn to channel our feelings and emotions into hopeful thoughts and put greater efforts into making an actual change. Thanks to these pictures, every day more and more people are opening their eyes to the reality of climate change, going to protests, switching to sustainable alternatives in their personal lives, and sharing this message with other people.
Francesca Cuomo
References
Bikes S. N. (2021), Tuvalu looking at legal ways to be a state if it is submerged, https://www.reuters.com/business/cop/tuvalu-looking-legal-ways-be-state-if-it-is-submerged-2021-11-09/ (last access 20/04/2022).
Carnazzi S. (2017), 50 foto che hanno cambiato il mondo dei diritti umani, https://www.lifegate.it/50-foto-che-hanno-cambiato-il-mondo-dei-diritti-umani (last access 20/04/2022).
Mittermeier C. (2018), Starving-Polar-Bear Photographer Recalls What Went Wrong, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/article/explore-through-the-lens-starving-polar-bear-photo (last access 20/04/2022).
Documenting Climate Change by Air, Land, and Sea (2019), https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/14/lens/climate-change-josh-haner-air-land-and-sea.html (last access 20/04/2022).
King Tides and Climate Change, https://www.epa.gov/cre/king-tides-and-climate-change#:~:text=The%20king%20tide%20is%20the,known%20as%20perigean%20spring%20tides (last access 20/04/2022).
