The climate crisis is getting more serious with each year that passes. In 2018, the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) released its newest report stating, that we only have 12 years to change course and decrease global emissions drastically before a critical tipping point is reached (Watts 2018). This is worrying. Not only for those who will suffer directly from the consequences of climate change, like losing their home or loved ones to flooding,  hurricanes and wildfires or experiencing food shortages due to prolonged droughts and loss of natural environments, but it is also worrying ‘for people not yet living directly in the path of climate change’ (Schlanger, 2017).

In 2017, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) released a joint report with Climate for Health and ecoAmerica which outlined the effects of climate change on our mental health. They warn that ‘direct, acute experience with a changing climate’ like the ones I describe above, can trigger severe and sudden mental health consequences (Schlanger, 2017; Manning et al., 2017). But they also state that such existential anxiety can be caused indirectly from ‘watching the slow and seemingly irrevocable impacts of climate change unfold, and worrying about the future for oneself, children, and later generations’ (ibid).

This, they call ‘eco-anxiety’ the ‘chronic fear of environmental doom’ (Manning et al., 2017)

So while the impacts of climate change differ between countries and communities, the stressors that result from it ‘whether experienced indirectly or directly’ can trigger mental health issues such as PTSD, depression and anxiety (Manning et al., 2017).

I recognise that I am no where near as affected by this as people living on the frontlines of the climate crisis, yet I relate to feeling helpless by the ‘uncertainty over what is yet to come’, and fearful of the fact that ‘according to the U.N., we now have less than 11 years to prevent catastrophic climate change ‘ (Nugent, 2019).

Due to the the course I study but also through having personal interest in the this issue, I engage often and deeply with the complex situation of the seemingly inevitable environmental collapse. I stopped daydreaming of a future in which I have the freedom to go, do and be anything that I want. I’m too aware of the possibility that extreme weather events, millions of climate refugees and polluted, dwindling ecosystems might change the way all of us will be able to live our lives. The uncertainty, triggered by political inaction and still widespread denial of the climate crisis frustrates me. I and many others feel out of control and helpless as to what we, as single individuals can do to stop what is unfolding right under our noses (Fawbert, 2019). To deal with these feelings, many people, me included,  ‘project into the future, sometimes into apocalyptic thinking’ (Nugent, 2019).

Eco-anxiety is not talked about much yet but with more and more people especially among younger generations experiencing these anxieties,  this is likely to change.

Through my photography project I tried to visualise these complex feelings that result from the increasing threat of climate change and environmental destruction.

 

References:

Fawbert, D (2019) ‘’Eco-anxiety’: how to spot it and what to do about it’, BBC , 27 March. [online] Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/article/b2e7ee32-ad28-4ec4-89aa-a8b8c98f95a5 [Accessed 7 Mar 2020].

Manning, C. S. et al. (2017) ‘Mental Health and Our Changing Climate: Impacts, Implications, and Guidance’. American Psychological Association, Climate for Health and ecoAmerica [online]. Available at: https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2017/03/mental-health-climate.pdf [Accessed 20 May 2020].

Nugent, C. (2019) ‘Terrified of Climate Change? You Might Have Eco-Anxiety’, Time, 21 November. [online] Available at: https://time.com/5735388/climate-change-eco-anxiety/ [Accessed 20 May 2020].

Watts, J. (2018) ‘We have 12 years to limit climate change catastrophe, warns UN’, The Guardian,  8 October. [online] Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/08/global-warming-must-not-exceed-15c-warns-landmark-un-report [Accessed 21 May 2020].

Schlanger, Z. (2017) ‘We need to talk about “ecoanxiety”: Climate change is causing PTSD, anxiety, and depression on a mass scale’, Quartz, 3 April. [online] Available at: https://qz.com/948909/ecoanxiety-the-american-psychological-association-says-climate-change-is-causing-ptsd-anxiety-and-depression-on-a-mass-scale/ [Accessed 20 May 2020].

Contemporary art photography and the discourse that surrounds it takes its values and key phrases both from Conceptual Art of the 1960s and 1970s and Postmodernism of the 1980s (Bull, 2010).

Key features of contemporary art photography according to Soutter (2018), include an evasiveness in its interpolation but openness in its ethics, a reliance on external narratives and stories around the photographers personality and career, as well as the desire for ambiguity. In other words, favourable works are those which are somewhat ‘illogical, uncertain and riddled with elements of contradiction, fiction and fantasy’ (Soutter, 2018: 34).

But in order to understand these values we need to go back and look at the earlier art movements outlined above.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, there was a conceptual shift in art and art photography which saw ‘phrases such as ‘investigate’, ‘explore’ and ‘question’ become a central part of art discourse’ (Bull, 2010: 137).  This attitude concerned not only the reflection ‘on the medium itself’ but it also sought to raise issues which related to the social world, beyond art (ibid).

Decades later, the discourse that art can or should be ‘’seeking’ to ‘investigate’, ‘explore’, ‘question’, ‘challenge’ and/or ‘interrogate their subject and their medium’ is a core element of contemporary art photography (Bull, 2010: 144). Furthermore, Soutter (2018) argues that ‘contemporary art’s reliance on external narratives’ also stems from the values propagated by the Conceptual Art movement/era (26).

This is also what I aimed for within my own practice. Using art as a research method, contrary to notions of ‘art for arts sake’, my project follows a conceptual approach, basing its aim on an external narrative concerning the issue of environmental breakdown and the emotional toll this takes on humans, i.e. ‘Eco-Anxiety’.

Thus we can see that there was a shift from art as ‘expression’ towards art as ‘research’ (Bull, 2010: 144). This ‘anti-expressive conceptual art’ paved the way for ‘a more narrative kind of art’ something which we can observe in todays’ art photography (Soutter, 2018: 26). Likewise, the Conceptual Art movement also emphasised art which was ‘based in part on the activities and personality of the artists’ (ibid).

This, as well, is one of the features of contemporary art photography, as oftentimes there seems to be the need for an explanation as to why the artist created their work (Soutter, 2018). Consequently, contemporary art photographers have begun to embrace this “biographical, anecdotal” aspect of their practice (Soutter, 2018: 27).

Similarly, my specific circumstances, such as being an Environment Communication student as well my personal interests in and engagement with topics around Environmentalism provides context for my photographic work.

Another remark made by Bull (2010) surrounds the use of the word ‘beauty’ within the art context. While critical analysis of art during the 1980s and 1990s understood ‘beauty’ as ‘almost politically incorrect’ in describing and analysing art, the term has made a comeback, influenced by fashion photography and the tableaux (Bull, 2010:144). As such, ‘aesthetically pleasing composition and lighting have returned as almost subversive elements in the context of contemporary photographic art’ (ibid).

In relation to my own project this means that I as well, sought to create images that carry a message about a wider social issue (that of ecological crisis and accompanying ‘eco-anxiety’) but doing this through an aesthetic approach. As I mentioned here, I was personally influenced by the visuals of fashion photography when I developed the idea for project.

Overall, Soutter (2018) believes that identifying the subject matter of a contemporary art photograph is oftentimes easy. However, she warns that by assuming that ‘what is shown is the most important feature’ or in other words focusing on a photograph’s literal depiction, one risks missing out ‘on a tremendous richness of ideas’ (Soutter, 2018:17). The meanings of photographs are signified in various ways and ‘with subject matter being only the most obvious’ (ibid).

In the context of my project this was a point I pondered over as well. I realised that what makes photographs striking is not a very accurate depiction of what you are trying to say, in my case using a melting ice block to resemble the melting glaciers, but photographs become powerful when their meaning is evoked in an elusive way. Soutter (2018) speaks of exactly that when she writes: ‘For after all, don’t we want photographs to be able to do more than just point us to things in the world that remind us of something we already know?’ (17).

References:

Bull, S. (2010) Photography. Oxon: Routledge.

Soutter, L. (2018) Why Art Photography? 2nd ed. Oxon: Routledge

 

Portraiture has been a well established genre of photography since its very beginning in the 19th Century (Bates, 2009; Soutter, 2018).

Traditionally, portraits, whether painted or photographed,  provide a ‘site of identification and projection’, their main focus lies on the individual who is depicted while ‘inviting us to relate ourselves to the person or people in the image’ (Soutter, 2018: 18). It is, in Soutter’s (2018) words, ‘a humanistic enterprise, wrapped up in the project of reading, understanding and reinforcing what we know about human subjectivity.” (34).

At the same time, Bates (2009) argues that ‘portraiture is more than just a picture’ (67). Instead, ‘it is a place of work: a semiotic event for social identity’ (ibid). Similarly, Soutter (2018) remarks that trough that depiction of the subject’s social identity, portraits have the ability to convey to the viewer ‘a sense of what they (the subject) are like’ (18) . Furthermore, Soutter (2018) quotes art historian Richard Brilliant, who describes portraits as ‘purposeful constructions that present a particular proposition about a person’ and whose aim it is to ‘elicit a psychological response from the viewer’ (ibid).

This last remark in particular, relates very poignantly to my own project in which I used self-portraits to convey a specific feeling of the subject with the aim to trigger an (emotional) response from the viewer, in my case specifically the reminder of the precarious state the Earth is in and the effect this has on us humans.

Even more so, in my project, I sought to employ what Bates (2009) calls ‘projection’, which describes a specific way of reading portraits in which ‘the viewer casts off uncomfortable feelings, which arise in themselves and relocates them within another person or thing’ (82).

In practice this meant using the four key elements of portraiture (face, pose, clothing, location) in order to create a specific ‘rhetoric’ within the image (Bates, 2009: 73). Bates (2009) argues that through the combination of these four elements, portraits are able to construct meaning that goes beyond what is depicted.

In my case, I mostly played with different facial expressions and poses, to a lesser degree with the aspects of clothing and location, although the latter one could broadly be associated with the use of different props (like sand, ice, or flowers) and type of background. In fact, Bates (2009) adds that the use of other,  familiar ‘photographic codes’ such as lighting, framing, camera angle, props etc. provides a way of controlling and adjusting the four key elements of portraiture (73-74).

What this means in relation to my project is for instance, that through use of softer light for the ‘biodiversity’ shots, I was able to emphasise the fragility and vulnerability of both the subject and nature (embodied here through the flowers).

Similarly, a close up camera angle as well as harsher, bright light used for the ‘desertification’ theme, almost draws the viewer into the photograph, allowing her/him to not only witness but also feel with and for the subject.

According to Bates (2009), facial expressions are crucial in portraiture since they ‘exert a considerable impact on how a portrait signifies meaning’ (74). They give the viewer an insight into the mood and state of mind of the subject in front of the lens. At the same time, most people know that the specific expression of the person photographed does not necessarily describe ‘a fixed state of being’ and so, seek to look beyond this layer of the portrait by evaluating elements such as the pose or clothing/outfit (Bates, 2009: 75) .

The pose in portraiture in particular ‘connote(s) all kinds of aspects of a perceived character (mental, physical, social, etc.) of the person depicted’ (Bates, 2009: 76).

In the context of my project these ranged from feeling trapped (behind the plastic sheet), in denial (of the melting ice literally above our heads) or numbed by and wanting to hide from the prospect of a deserted future.

Through these different postures and gestures, I tried to ’embody’ the subject’s ‘psychological attitude’ (Bates, 2009: 76).

 

References:

Bate, D. (2009) Photography: The Key Concepts. Oxford: Berg.

Soutter, L. (2018) Why Art Photography? 2nd ed. Oxon: Routledge