Photography as an Expressive Tool of Environmental Concerns Essay Example

our troubled relationship with nature. His photographs are distinguished not only by their economy and lucidity but also by their mixture of grief and hope. They document scenes of the American West of the past four decades revealing the impact of human activity on the last vestiges of wilderness and open space (Adams, 32). Although often devoid of human subjects, his photos capture the physical traces of human life, for instance, a clear cut forest, a garbage-strewn roadside and a half built house.

He says that he began taking pictures because he wanted to record what supports hope; the untranslatable mystery and beauty of the world. He has recorded the epic natural beauty and palpable silence, and the defilement of that beauty by industrialization, pollution, and consumerism. His photographs are kind of evidence to what has been lost and what remains. Apart from his photographs, he has written a lot of critical essays on the art of photography including the beauty in photography.

Seeing is the hardest part of taking a picture. A photographer is an individual who knows how to see and can communicate effectively. It is important to understand who can participate in the medium to support a stronger case for photography education advocacy. To describe a photographer reveals multiple definitions and qualities. It allows an individual the ability to communicate small moments in time when particular emotions or moods are felt (McLean, 22). Robert Adams communicates expressions such as sorrow, humility, joy or wonders and can change the way people perceive the world and promote change in the way others see.

First, photographs can expose the environmental problems like nothing else. Local photographers have a

tremendous impact in getting their viewers to think about what is going on environmentally (Dewey, 42). The Robert Adams’ photographs are raising awareness to the people to be able to understand the effects the environment experiences when they are carrying out their daily activities. Secondly, they help get people care. Great photographs such as that of Robert Adams explore the totality of our world such that we never see it quite the same again. Photography has become a cacophony global today such that millions of pictures are uploaded every day where everyone is a subject. Digital cameras are helping out the environment.

Photographers have prints made up from digital photos. They can save money and lower waste but only printing out the photos they want unlike the old days of film where photographers ended up developing a whole roll of film, dozen rolls of photo shoot or big event.

There is also excess space taken up by the photo developing equipment. Photographers need an entire room of their own for photo developing. They need enlargers, trays, special lights and more of these films. Going digital can make the photographers save a lot of space. Many digital cameras do the same thing that SLR cameras do these days too. They can provide pictures of the same quality and clarity (Sontag, 44). The digital camera, therefore, is doing a lot to help the environment by producing one picture at a time.

According to Robert Adams, photography embraces the pursuit of natural and manmade landscape with the new objectivity. The landscape has been the most recurrent subject of photographic study since the invention of the camera obscures (Adams, 15). Photography rarely

views the negative side of nature although historically, painters have presented and revealed the ominous qualities of nature. The growth of camera art is a byproduct of a mechanistic age and parallels our culture’s use of technology to rule the universe. Photographs are not just snapshots taken during sightseeing jaunts into the heavens but scientific maps of a terrain and topography soon to be exploited by the human race. The photographs also remind us of the technological advances that man has made in every field (Edwards, 65).

Conservation photography is another concern about the environment. The active use of photographic processes and its products within the parameters of photojournalism to advocate for conservation outcomes protects the environment. It combines nature photography with the proactive issue-oriented approach to documentary photography as an agent for protecting nature and improving the biosphere and natural environment. Adams advocated for conservation photography as it also furthers environmental, wildlife and habitat conservation or cultural conservation. This is achieved by expanding public awareness of issues and stimulating remedial action. For instance, the mission for the international league of conservation photographers is to further environmental and cultural conservation through ethical photography (Adams, 10).

The current environmental problems that the world is facing are global warming, air pollution, natural resource depletion, and loss of biodiversity, deforestation, acid rain, waste disposal, climate change, urban sprawl, ozone layer depletion and water pollution among others. Climate change is a major issue for scientists and artists as well. Robert Adams as a photographer is challenging viewers to consider the dangers of inaction by capturing the effects of extreme weather and a warming world. He says that they make the climate

change visible. For those who deny that the global warming is real, some photos have been taken before and after this change. The climate crisis is becoming more apparent when looking at recent photos of lakes, coral reefs and comparing them with photos taken 20 years ago (Ingledew, 33).

Robert Adams provided images of tract houses, waterways, main streets and trees to record two kinds of landscapes. One of the landscapes is damaged by people while the other one is beyond the power of people to cause damage to them. The photographs clearly show people to make considerations of where they live and how they relate to the environment. The following photographs are some of Robert Adams. In the first picture, he is trying to express the work of man in the exploitation of forests. If man continues to cut down more trees the rich, green land will turn into a desert. The picture makes a depiction of the tree stumps and carcasses that have been shorn on the hillsides found in the coast range that was mostly contributed by logging industry with their mechanical bulldozers and snippers (Coutts, 88).

The image recalls the human killing that was documented by other photographers from the battlefield. The photograph is taken by Adams to show clearly the trumps until where they meet a narrow stand of trees. The underbrush was being uprooted, and trees were being sliced despite having stood for generations as a cross-section of the stump is said to be so large that did not fit the frame of the camera. This photograph raises a lot of environmental concerns as the deforestation will lead to severe effects

that may lead to desertification.

In the second photograph, it shows the effects of industrialization. The fumes and gasses emitted by factories will continuously deplete the ozone layer hence allowing more of the radiation from the sun reaching the earth leading to global warming. The photograph shows how the growth of industries has affected the environment. The factories emit gasses that are dangerous to the environment. This photograph gives a clear depiction of how the environment has been affected so much due to an increase of manufacturing plans. To avoid the effects of global warming factories should be regulated to have strategies that prevent the fumes and gasses that are harmful to the environment (Brusaporci, 57).

Proper treatment of the wastes should be undertaken. In the picture below the toxic black cloud gives beauty that is unexpected against Colorado Rockies covered by snow. This photograph acts as an example vision that Adams had for the simultaneous existence of discord and harmony and beauty in ugliness. Most of the works are inspired by the joy in the beauty contained in the landscape and the disappointment due to degradation and exploitation in need of commercial and residential development.

Robert Adams has extensively documented the open plains of the west, forests, and the open skies. The raw beauty that is conveyed by the photographs is juxtaposed with overtones of the environment and metaphor of loss. Some of the images by Adams are somewhat of a paradox that shows the natural beauty of the American waste and the extinction of the original beauty when industrialization, pollution, and consumerism took place. Adams ushered the concept of the landscape that is altered to be

seen as a form of art. The housing tracts that were built I Colorado was filled by people who moved west to search for new Eden in which they later discover that they were in an artificial landscape that was isolated. The people had moved to the place to enjoy nature, but it was inaccessible except during the weekends. He also focused on people who resided closer to Rocky Flats plant for nuclear weapons that were outside Denver.

Plutonium was processed in the facility that is the most toxic element that is known. Plutonium when in contact with moist air ignites and caused many fires in the plant that makes the people that live in the area feel threatened. The environment is seriously affected by the plutonium because of the toxic nature that seriously affects the lives of individuals. Adams also observes the remains of glorious citrus estates in Los Angeles that transformed after the World War II when real-estate developers had the intention to gain profit from selling the homes to the veterans. He returned to photograph the changes that had been made in the area that depicts how his photographs had a lot of concerns about the environment (Lowrie, 39).

Another photograph was taken by Robert Adams that shows environmental concerns is that of the West from the Columbia. The image shows loveliness of the sunlight that is shown moving on the surface of the Pacific Ocean to suggest questions about mortality and immortality together with the power that nature has. Adams gives a reminder that the landscape that was facing the ocean was the Northwest coast that is an area that had been known

to damage old-growth forests. This shows environmental concerns of the photographs taken by Robert Adams as he said that people travel to beaches in Washington and Oregon to escape the interior that had been deforested by residential and commercial development. Adams clearly states that of all the places that make people comfortable on the coastal region is the point where the rivers join the sea. When the rivers disappear to the sea, people are reminded that life is passing, and the beauty that is provided in the ocean makes people accept it in hope that cannot be explained (Adams, 37).

A wildlife photographer, Robert, talks about his relationship with the most beautiful regions in the world and the people who inhabit it. Much of his photography centers around the arctic national wildlife refuge in Alaska because it is unprotected from oil exploration (Barnbaum, 47). He also says that his goal is to see the plain permanently protected. Through his work, he hopes to give voice to the creatures of our planet and their habitat. The most important thing an artist can do to address climate change according to him; he shared the beauty of the Arctic with his images of Greenland, Norway, and Alaska to give voice to the climate change. There are times when he uses simple pictures to inspire people. He feels that using photography can be a powerful tool for addressing climate change (Adams, 53).

Photographs play a very important role in the environmental discourse. Nature documentaries and books have continued to offer images for untouched and not yet destroyed nature. They also give the photos of the nature that man has shaped and

contaminated. The main aim is to get people take action for conservation (Arnheim, 15). The images produced in newspapers, televisions and magazines serve to arouse emotions, stimulate actions and to open up windows of the nature that still seems to exist out there. Photographs are crucial elements in the production of meanings such that they are selective means of popularization having the ability to highlight certain aspects of reality while hiding others.

They also construct social relations that are not easily translated into linguistic form thus making photos and other visual images important elements in the definition and popularization of abstract scientific concepts such as biodiversity. A photograph is not seen as a neutral representation of reality but a combination of various ways with issues of politics, power and practices of representation (Kopytin and Madeline, 38).

Robert Adams photographs have long contributed to understanding the environment very well by portraying the landscapes that help people to understand the causes of the destruction of the environment and the severe effects caused by human activities in the region. In understanding the causes of environmental degradation people can deduce various ways to minimize the impacts of their activities that destroy the beautiful environment.

Works Cited

• Adams, Robert. Beauty in Photography: Essays in Defense of Traditional Values. New York, N.Y: Aperture, 1989. Print.
• Arnheim, Rudolf. Visual Thinking. Berkeley u.a.: Univ. of California Press, 2005. Print.
• Barnbaum, Bruce. The Art of Photography: An Approach to Personal Expression. Santa Barbara, CA: Rocky Nook, 2010. Print.
• Brusaporci, Stefano. Handbook of Research on Emerging Digital Tools for Architectural Surveying, Modeling, and Representation. , 2015. Print.
• Coutts, Glen, and Timo Jokela. Art, Community and Environment: Educational Perspectives. Bristol, UK: Intellect, 2008. Print.