Photography

Artists from ten countries went to Iceland, the Arctic and the jungle to photograph landscapes that future generations will most probably never be able to see as a result of climate change.




The air is clear, up in the North it never really gets very dark, somebody has turned an imaginary hourglass upside down – the ice floes of the Arctic are melting as gently and as relentlessly as time is running out. The UN Climate Change Secretariat recently announced an increase of 2.3 per cent of greenhouse gases in the 40 industrialised countries which signed the Kyoto Protocol. By the end of the 21st century temperatures could have risen by up to six degrees Celsius more than they were 100 years ago. If that happened, sea levels would rise by up to 60 centimetres. These changes in climate would lead to the extinction of 30 per cent of all flora and fauna.

A catalogue of large-format photographs has now bridged the gap between climate and art, translating these daunting figures into images. A total of 21 international artists have gone out into the world and documented these “Vanishing Landscapes” with their cameras. The photographers come from Canada, Denmark, Japan, Germany and the USA. They went to Iceland, the Arctic and the jungle to photograph landscapes that future generations will most probably never be able to see as a result of climate change.

Water, ice, plants and land

Among the photographers who contributed to this 224-page volume of photographs are such great names as Axel Hütte, Walter Niedermayr, Thomas Struth and Hiroshi Sugimoto from Japan, not to mention lesser known photographers of the younger generation. Some of them have preceded their works with a short introductory text. The volume is divided into four sections – water, ice, plants and land.

Right at the beginning of the book there are Hiroshi Sugimoto’s meditative marine images. In his pictures he has managed to capture the sky, the horizon and the sea with his usual clarity. Photographed in black and white, strictly partitioned, the marine images convey a certain menace. One gets the impression that something unforeseen is about to happen, maybe a tidal wave is about to sweep over the shore. Another photographer, Josef Hoflehner, also uses black and white to depict bizarre rock formations in China that are reflected in mirror-like lakes. Michael Kenna photographed a high-voltage pylon in Japan that has become part of the general scene like the tree in the background.

Alongside the photographs there are also written passages focusing on the subject of “Vanishing Landscapes”. A landscape is always a “projection screen for people’s yearnings”, writes Nadine Barth. The art historian and publisher of the volume places the photographs on a level with Caspar David Friedrich’s romantic landscape paintings. Today of course Friedrich’s Wanderer Above The Sea of Fog would no longer ponder the never-ending vastness of the sea, but be more concerned about the rise in the level of the sea.

In the meantime the scientist and head of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, makes it quite clear in an interview what the title “Vanishing Landscapes” means in concrete terms for the environment. The islands of the South Sea would hardly stand a chance at all, Sylt and the Halligen islands could be submerged completely, the glaciers of Switzerland would melt and whole cities like Hamburg, New York and Venice could be swamped by tidal waves. Schellnhuber demands a fundamental paradigm shift that he calls the “Third Industrial Revolution.” Greenpeace activist, Karsten Smid, is the last of the experts to express his thoughts in the book and he also demands a radical change in thinking.

A photographer’s expedition to the Arctic

In the catalogue the Munich photographer, Olaf Otto Becker, represents a kind of interface between science and art. He went on an expedition to the Arctic for his piece Broken Line. Between 2003 and 2007 he covered 4,000 kilometres along the West coast of Greenland in a motorised inflatable dinghy. For most of this icy journey he was alone. Equipped only with his camera and a GPS system he managed to reach Melville Bay on the 75th parallel. Becker has made it easy for anybody to return to this remote place where the photos were taken and see the changes the photographed landscape has gone through in the course of time. Like a meticulous researcher, Becker has indexed his photographs with the most accurate GPS readings – one of his images, for example, is listed like this: “Inland Ice 2, Greenland 07/2007, 69°41′00″ N, 049°53′22″ W, altitude 829”.

Before Becker became a modern voyager of discovery he studied communications design, philosophy and theology. The images of Becker the photographer, who was born in Travemünde in 1959, require a lot of time on the part of the viewer. Taking such photographs in icy conditions must be a real feat of strength, especially as Becker prefers to use the rather cumbersome, heavy large-format camera. He has to mount it on a tripod first, before he can press the release. One can feel this scrupulously precise preparation in his photographs. They did not just happen by chance, but were carefully composed. Alongside the views of virgin territories, there are photographs revealing traces of the human being: a still-life of old oil drums, a wooden pier, a red sledge. It is however above all the photos that are completely devoid of any human signs that are so impressive – a fjord, for example, winding its way through the ice. Alongside the incredible contrast between the turquoise-coloured water and the surrounding white landscape, the photograph radiates a fascinating tranquillity. The images are of such high definition that one can clearly make out the intricate texture of the ice. One might even imagine hearing the drip-drop of the melting ice. Maybe the “Third Industrial Revolution” is also going to be an artistic one.