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In the summer of 2019 unprecedented temperatures<\/a> were experienced across Northern Europe, with at least 12 countries breaking national heat records. July 2019 was the hottest month on earth since temperature records began in 1880. <\/a>This was, and is, indicative of the growing disaster the planet is facing in the form of climate change. World Weather Attribution<\/a> found that there was an extremely low probability of these temperatures being reached (for instance in France less than about once every 1000 years) without climate change. Climate change made this extreme weather around 100 times more likely. Put in these terms, the summer of 2019 sounds apocalyptic- and in many ways it was. The European Forest Fire Information System <\/a>found that in 2019 1,300 square miles of continental Europe were burned (15% more than the decades annual average), but the vast majority of the photography that we saw told a different story. Beach days, sunbathing and icecreams<\/a> predominantly featured in photographs of the summer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The role and responsibility that photographers themselves have when photographing events related to the climate crisis has been subject to increased attention in recent years. Photography is a powerful visual medium that can be used to educate, raise awareness and inspire action, and as such there is a strong argument that this comes with an implicit responsibility about the representations of an issue being made to the public. Visual storytelling can shift\u00a0public perception and behaviours<\/a>, which in turn influences national and international responses to the crisis. Climate Visuals is a non-profit built around this relationship between photography and social action; focused on changing the type of imagery used in relation to the climate crisis, so that it is not just \u201cillustrative but truly impactful and inspires change,\u201d as project lead Toby Smith states. The group is founded in research in social science; they use evidence gathered from focus groups in Europe and the USA to examine the emotional responses to different photographic depictions of the climate crisis. Smith says they want to see a more compelling and diverse visual language around climate change: less \u201cpolar bears, factories and glaciers\u2026 all of which have the really neat trick of signifying climate change, but still producing a large amount of cynicism and inactivity\u201d. It\u2019s this cynicism that they hope photography can help overcome in order to build our collective investment in reducing environmental harm.<\/a>Jonas Bendiksen\u00a0China. Qinghai province. 2009. In the Yellow Rivers headwaters area. Just outside Hua Shi Xia, a settlement for resettled nomads. The pictured family were resettled from the surrounding area around\u00a0(…)<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/a>Jonas Bendiksen\u00a0Tajikstan. 2009. In the village of Shohi Safed by the Zerafshan river in the Zerafshan valley. Muholol “General” Ahmedov (73), picking currants from a tree. Next to him are two water irrigation pip\u00a0(…)<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/a>Jonas Bendiksen\u00a0China. Qinghai province. 2009. In the Yellow Rivers headwaters area, about 40m drive from Madoi town, towards Yushu. Sand dunes show the increasing desertification of the Tibetan plateau, with shal\u00a0(…)<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is perhaps because the climate crisis has presented a new challenge to practitioners (how do you go about capturing an existential threat, moving at literally glacial speed, in a single frame?) that imagery has often felt reductive in the face of a challenge on the scale of the climate crisis. Magnum photographer Cristina de Middel, who covered the 2019 wildfires in Brazil, describes exactly this: \u201cThe drama and the destruction that was happening was hard to capture and express with just images of flames and burnt pieces of the jungle. The scale of everything was overwhelming and by framing that reality, and deciding which piece of it would become a picture, I was actually losing the magnitude\u00a0of it\u201d.<\/a>Cristina de Middel\u00a0The Xavante tribe is known to be aggressive and a warrior society. They call themselves \u201cthe invisibles\u201d. Fire plays an important role in their traditions. They use if for hunting and also to keep\u00a0(…)<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/a>Cristina de Middel\u00a0The fazenda of Sidnei H\u00fcbner is just 800 acres, a small one for the area. In the beginning of Augusta fire burnt 2\/3 of his area right after the corn harvest. The fire started at a some neighbours\u00a0(…)<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/a>Cristina de Middel\u00a0Entrance of the fazenda Flamboyant, a 800 acre propertu focused in corn and soy production. The owner, Sidnei H\u00fcbner arrived from the South 40 years ago looking for cheaper land to cultivate. In\u00a0(…)<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI think it depends on what you expect photography to do or what you expect of the photographer,\u201d says Sim Chi Yin in reference to the challenges posed by photographing the climate crisis. \u201cI think this is a deeper question about whether photography and photographers are expected to be advocates and activists as well,\u201d she continues. \u201cThere are things that may translate photographically into climate change and some things that don\u2019t\u201d. Sim has been working on her project\u00a0Shifting Sands<\/a>, documenting\u00a0the social and environmental cost of the land reclamation industry<\/a>\u00a0in East and Southeast Asia. Previously taking an\u00a0\u2018infrastructural gaze\u2019<\/a>, shot at ground level, capturing the people and places affected, she has since adopted a birds-eye view, producing strikingly beautiful other-wordly landscape photography. It\u2019s not uncommon to hear criticism of photography, particularly in the realm of editorial, for making terrible things look too beautiful. This is an all too familiar conundrum for Smith in his work at\u00a0Climate Visuals<\/em>: \u201cI spend a lot of my time arguing with the media about social science but the other side is that I spend a lot of time arguing with social scientists about the subjective qualities of photography,\u201d he says.NEWSROOMA Mirage of Luxury Built on SandSim Chi Yin<\/a><\/a>Sim Chi Yin\u00a0Singapore. Tuas. 2017. From “Shifting Sands”, 2017 – on-going. Land reclamation works are on-going at this area of Tuas, Singapore’s westernmost area where a new massive container port — the w\u00a0(…)<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/a>Sim Chi Yin\u00a0Tractors plough through piles of sand which have been deposited by sand barges at the Forest City development \u2014 a joint venture between a China developer with the state government and Sultan of Joh\u00a0(…)<\/p>\n\n\n\n In essence, though accurate and impactful depictions of the climate crisis are the goal, the photos need to be published if you\u2019re going to achieve that, and the pictures have to be good or that\u2019s not going to happen. For Sim Chi Yin, the beauty of her Shifting Sands images were an entirely deliberate move away from the more \u2018ditactic heavy-handed approach\u2019 she once took; here, the aestheticization of a challenging topic is a strategy to encourage on-going engagement in a difficult conversation.<\/a>Vietnam. Mekong River. 2017. Ha Thi Be, 67, poses for a portrait with the two young grandsons who lived with her in this ancestral home, Ha Duy Phuc, 11, and Ha Trung Kien, 4. The children have rar\u00a0(…)<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/a>Sim Chi Yin\u00a0Vietnam. Phu Thuan B commune. 2017. Ms Lam Thi Kim Muoi, 43, poses for a portrait in her family’s ancestral house abandoned a year ago (2016) after riverbank erosion snapped part of it off into th\u00a0(…)<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is, for obvious reasons, an excess of what might be referred to as \u2018disaster photography\u2019 in coverage of the climate crisis. The aesthetic properties of these images \u2018sell\u2019 but, according to\u00a0Climate Visuals<\/em>\u00a0research<\/a>, don\u2019t create a meaningful, or \u2013 perhaps more accurately \u2013 an actionable, response in the viewer. The Global South has already suffered a disproportionate number of climate disasters, simply because populations and ecosystems in tropical, higher-latitude regions\u00a0experience the worst effects<\/a>\u00a0of rising global temperatures. As a result, you\u2019d be forgiven as a consumer of photography for thinking that climate change wasn\u2019t affecting Western Europe. This echoes the experience of de Middel: \u201cI think we are still in a stage where environmental issues are perceived as something exotic and distant, even if they are not. Despite the frequent vivid reminders of the seriousness of the situation, the threat sounds distant\u00a0and that makes the\u00a0 sense of urgency very difficult to convey\u201d. Many people don\u2019t relate to these images beyond the shock and awe of the moment, because it doesn\u2019t resonate with their own demographic construct. This in turn, has resulted in the othering of communities in the Global South as they are continually represented as victims, often by foreign Western photographers, as a way to capture the climate crisis in a way that\u2019s seen as visually appealing. Rarely do we see the photography of practitioners with lived experience of climate disasters in the Global South, and rarely do Western photographers\u2019 cameras turn to document the effect of climate change closer to home.ARTS & CULTUREBoa Noite PovoCristina de Middel<\/a><\/a>Cristina de Middel and Bruno Morais\u00a0From the project ‘Boa Noite Povo’. In 2017, when we moved to the Mata Atl\u00e1ntica jungle in Brazil, and started cohabiting with the frantic wildlife of the area, we decided to start exploring the exi\u00a0(…)<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/a>Cristina de Middel and Bruno Morais\u00a0From the project ‘Boa Noite Povo’. Boa Noite Povo is a mix of archival imagery, directed animal action, night photography and plastic intervention of ephemeral pieces that show the complexity of th\u00a0(…)<\/p>\n\n\n\n This, at least in part, can be attributed to a general desire for simple narratives when taking on an issue as huge and amorphous as the climate crisis. And, in a parallel and more practical sense, the causes and impacts of climate change are more compelling and cinematic than, say, the solutions to the climate crisis. So, reaching Net Zero \u2013\u00a0\u00a0achieving an overall balance<\/a>\u00a0between emissions produced and emissions taken out of the atmosphere \u2013 has the potential, in Smith\u2019s own words, \u201cto be a really boring photographic essay\u201d. There is however, an \u201cextremely powerful\u201d way to communicate the issue, by combining images of disaster with images of solutions and action.NEWSROOMFuture Proofing Life on EarthJonas Bendiksen<\/a><\/a>Jonas Bendiksen\u00a0Bangladesh. Genduram in the Gaibandha district. 2010. Flooded village. The three villagers standing \/ sitting by jute on small ‘island’: Rafiqul Islam (sitting on jute, left), Mohammad Delwar Hoss\u00a0(…)<\/p>\n\n\n\n But this in itself presents a challenge, and gets to the heart of the problem of documenting the climate crisis in photography; how can photographers tell more nuanced and innovative stories within their relatively narrow medium? Jonas Bendiksen, who documented\u00a0Bangladeshi\u00a0communities experiencing chronic flooding<\/a>, says that \u201cphotography has a tendency to oversimplify; it\u2019s not the easiest medium to formulate a complex thought process; it tends to rely on \u2018good\u2019 versus \u2018bad\u2019 and be less focused on the complexities of things\u201d. He\u2019s increasingly interested in the \u2018grey zones\u2019, for instance how photography of Western consumerism also provides an important perspective on the climate crisis, but is frustrated by limitations of the platforms that are available. There\u2019s an increasing pressure, driven by social media, for single images or a couple of slides to have an impact, to be easily-digestible. Climate change, particularly its effect on the Global North, will not reveal itself so it can be fitted neatly onto social media feeds. The commodification of environmental images, which we could describe as the photograph-social media industrial complex, also leads to an oversaturation of images, resulting in just the apathy that the Climate Visuals is endeavouring to avoid.THEORY & PRACTICEMost People Were SilentSim Chi Yin<\/a><\/a>Jonas Bendiksen\u00a0Bangladesh. Padmapukur. 2009. On the ‘char’ (silt island) of Padmapukur, in the Ganges delta. Hurricane Aila destroyed the dikes, thus causing daily flooding of the communities. Most of the village\u00a0(…)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some are already looking to overcome these limiting factors, like de Middel. \u201cAs a communicator, I find it interesting to explore new ways of presenting issues whose narratives are already exhausted and who suffer from over-reporting,\u201d she says, \u201cI believe it is part of the job to keep the audience interested and curious to know more\u201d. Sim Chi Yin says \u201cI think it\u2019s no longer enough just to make the pictures and put it through an editorial channel\u201d \u2014 where it is consumed for a day, and then forgotten about. As Sim grew increasingly frustrated with the limits of single image photography, she experimented with exhibition installations, performance lectures, and for her Shifting Sands project, a VR installation that has yet to be completed due to lack of funding. She says, \u201cI think we live in a different time, and this period of information and imagery-saturation needs different types of visual strategies for storytelling\u201d.<\/a>Sim Chi Yin\u00a0Malaysia. 2017. From “Shifting Sands”, 2017- on-going. A family takes a walk and goes fishing in an area in southern Malaysia now covered with giant sand dunes. The Danga Bay area is earmarked for\u00a0(…)License<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Smith makes it clear that it\u2019s not just the photographers and content generators, who sit at the wide bottom of the \u2018pyramid\u2019 of the photography industry, who can play a role in shifting public perceptions of the climate crisis. It\u2019s also the agency, distribution, and media companies who occupy the top of the pyramid and choose what is and isn\u2019t seen by a wider audience. There needs to be the funding and interest to commission work that can take on the long story-arc of the climate crisis in all its complexity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Photography is an enormously powerful way of communicating the challenges posed by the climate crisis, inspiring outrage, anger and fear. But it also has greater potential to engage people beyond these fleeting emotions \u2013 giving form to the sometimes abstract nature of the challenges facing us \u2013 moving people to hope and action. Visual storytelling can and should be a crucial tool for building a social mandate around tackling climate change, but as many have been forced to take stock and adjust to the new reality of the climate crisis, so too will the world of photography. NEWSROOM Photographing Australia\u2019s Black SummerPaolo Pellegrin<\/a> <\/a>Cristina de Middel\u00a0According to the government, 2019 was a normal year in terms of wildfires the state of Mato Grosso. Despite the 85% increase confirmed by the Brazilian National Space Research Institute. The number\u00a0(…)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sim Chi Yin Jonas Bendiksen Cristina de Middel<\/p>\n\n\n\n https:\/\/www.magnumphotos.com\/newsroom\/environment\/capturing-anthropocene-changing-depictions-climate-crisis\/<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Magnum photographers discuss alternative approaches to communicating climate change In this study of new photographic approaches to issues of climate change, Magnum photographers\u00a0Sim Chi Yin,\u00a0Cristina de Middel\u00a0and\u00a0Jonas Bendiksen\u00a0speak to writer Georgina Collins about their practice. Alongside this, Toby Smith from … Continue reading “It\u2019s this cynicism that they hope photography can help overcome in order to build our collective investment in reducing environmental harm.”<\/h3>\n\n\n\n