The Chic Ecologist

Chris Jordan – Environmental Awareness Photographer

I have always been fascinated with photography, its ability to tell a story in a single frame. Sustainable and environmental photography hardly ever gets its place in the spotlight, mainly because the images can be so graphic or disturbing that nobody wants to put them on their wall at home. Chris Jordan may be one of the only exceptions in this case as he is known for impactful, but artful photographic montages.

Chris Jordan has been on my radar for some time now, even before his photographs of millions of plastic bottles. Being a photographer myself (West|LaCount Photography) and given we both live in Seattle, WA – word gets around. His popularity has grown since converting what were once only statistics and numbers into visual representations so our minds can better quantify our impacts.

His latest photographic adventure, Midway – Message from the Gyre, is one of my favorites. Traveling to Midway Atoll, one of the remotest islands on earth, he set to show us how far reaching our impacts can be. Located in the North Pacific, halfway between the U.S. and Asia, he tells a story- a story of plastic. Home to over 1.5 million birds including colonies of Albatross, Frigate birds, Boobies, and Terns; it is also near the apex of the Pacific Garbage Patch.

“The nesting babies are fed bellies-full of plastic by their parents, who soar out over the vast polluted ocean collecting what looks to them like food to bring back to their young. On this diet of human trash, every year tens of thousands of albatross chicks die on Midway from starvation, toxicity, and choking.”

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Tags: Artist, Environmental Awareness, environmental impact, photography, plastic

Prix Pictet – Sustainability Photography

Sustainability and Photography- one of the most powerful mediums of change is the photograph. Images have the power to enrage, to calm, to motivate and educate. Prix Pictet brings together some of the most influential images by photographers immersed in a changing world to promote sustainability. This year’s theme is Earth.

I love it when I can combine two of my biggest passions as I am not only a huge proponent of sustainable, eco-friendly living, but also of photography. As an ecologist, I spent many hours in the field capturing butterfly images and nature and wildlife photographs, but my images pale in comparison to the feelings inspired by the images chosen for this years shortlist.

Food riots. Loss of forest cover. Desertification. The ecosystems we depend on appear to face resource demands already beyond their capacity. As governments try urgently to stimulate growth, a central question remains. Can the earth’s complex living systems sustain the future consumption patterns of another three billion people in the world’s population by 2050?

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Tags: Environmental Awareness, environmental impact, photography, sustainable