From: Napa Valley Register
A new photography exhibit highlighting environmental, wildlife and social issues recently opened at Mumm Napa. In “Changing Earth: Photographer’s Call to Action,” eight documentary photographers focus their lenses on such global issues as deforestation of the Amazon, climate change and our relationship with the wild.
The photographers are affiliated with Blue Earth Alliance, a nonprofit organization in Seattle “dedicated to raising awareness of endangered cultures, threatened environments and social concerns through photography,” according to Larry Ockene, president of the Blue Earth Alliance board.
An added bonus for visitors to the show is a stunning collection of 30 original Ansel Adams prints on loan from Matthew Adams, grandson of the famous photographer, who is also a sponsor of the “Changing Earth” show through the Ansel Adams Gallery. Many of Ansel Adams’ most famous photographs are here, including “Moonrise, Hernandez, N.M.” and “Monolith, The Face of Half Dome, Yosemite.”
The shows work together to present a reverential view of the natural world as well as an urgency to preserve it.
“It’s quite a mix of documentary photography and fine art. Blue Earth is giving valuable affirmation to these photographers. It’s someone else saying, ‘You’re doing great work, and it has value to society,’” Adams said.
John Trotter, for example, a photographer who spent 14 years as a photojournalist, chronicles the water of the Colorado River in his project, “No Agua, No Vida: The Thirsty Colorado River Delta.”
The Colorado River originally ran from its headwaters in the Rocky Mountains to the rich estuary of the Sea of Cortez in Mexico. But when the Hoover Dam was built in 1936, “the flow went down to a trickle” at the river’s mouth, Trotter noted.
“The Hoover Dam was, in so many ways, a triumph, but for the Cocopah, the People of the River in Mexico, it was a disaster,” Trotter continued. His photographs document the Cocopah’s lives in the now shallow, sometimes brackish mudflat that the delta has become.
“People aren’t aware where our water comes from,” Trotter observed. “I want people to understand their relationship to the Colorado River, and the water that comes from it. So much of the southwest United States is dependent on it. The agriculture of southern California is almost entirely dependent on it. It’s become a glorified plumbing system regulated by dams and reservoirs. Theoretically, every drop is spoken for by seven user states and Mexico,” he explained, referring to the 1922 agreement apportioning the river’s water.
Today, water levels are sinking. “A lot of water managers, if they were candid, would tell you how worried they really are. No one knows how climate change will affect this,” Trotter said. “Scripps’ scientists estimate there’s a 50/50 chance Lake Mead will be empty by 2021.” Lake Mead, the reservoir created when the Hoover Dam was built, supplies Las Vegas with 90 percent of its water.
Trotter became interested in the subject of water when, as a transplant from Missouri, he experienced his first seasonal drought in California while working at the Sacramento Bee.
“I wasn’t used to a dry April through October,” he stated. “So I went out and stood in the street when the first rain came. I wondered, How does this work? Where does California’s water come from? Where is it stored?”
Rivers are in Trotter’s blood. He grew up on the Mississippi River in
St. Louis, and found himself crossing the Colorado River on his way out to California and peering down at it from the edge of the Grand Canyon.
Another photographer, Rebecca Norris Webb, started out as a poet. When words failed her, she traveled for a year, taking “visual notes” for a future project. “What happened instead is that I started to fall in love with photography,” she said.
Webb’s poeticnature is evident in her haunting photos of visitors reflected in the protective glass of enclosed animals.
About a chimpanzee she photographed in the Warsaw Zoo, she says, “In the morning, the elderly gray-haired chimp was crabby and agitated. A group of school children was pounding on the glass and teasing him mercilessly. When I returned to the ape house later that day, I saw a young Polish girl, squatting on a ledge, looking at him so intently, and with such love and awe in her eyes, that the old chimp closed his eyes as if finally at peace. The reflection I photographed in the glass mirrored their relationship — it appears as if the grey-haired chimp is holding the lovely 4-year-old girl in his arms.”
Another documentary photographer in the show, Camille Seaman, traveled to the Arctic for her project, “The Last Iceberg.” Her eloquent portraits of of drifting icebergs, contrasted with a photograph entitled, “Walking on the Frozen Sea, Cape Washington, Antarctica,” highlights the effects of global warming. Indeed, her work in the show is part of a larger project she calls “Melting Away.”
Greenpeace photographer Daniel Beltrá and his project, “Amazon: Forest at Risk,” sharply document the beauty, burning and deforestation of the Amazon rainforest. Annie Marie Musselman movingly exhibits portraits of wounded owl, eagle, fawn and starling, among others, from the Sarvey Wildlife Project outside of Seattle.
Other exhibits include Benjamin Drummond’s work of Sámi reindeer herders and wildland firefighters in the U.S.; Stephen Harrison’s evocative images of the earth, and Florian Schulz’s pristine shots of wildlife and nature corridors from Baja to the Beaufort Sea.
Blue Earth artists are chosen according to projects that match its vision and whose work is compelling, Ockene said.
The nonprofit becomes a fiscal sponsor of six to eight photographers a year selected from 30 to 40 applications.
“It takes about four years for a photographer to finish his or her project,” he said, “so right now we have about 32 active projects going on.”
Blue Earth’s sponsorship allows photographers to apply for grants they wouldn’t be able to get as individuals.
Many organizations, such as the Soros Foundation, will only give to nonprofits. Photographers use the money for travel, printing and publishing expenses.
Blue Earth also provides contacts for marketing, PR, galleries and books, and technical assistance through consultants and a resource guide on the Web.