“Umhverfing is an Icelandic word for the state between nature and environment” says Pétur Thomsen of his project titled Umhverfing. There is clearly no equivalent word in English but the concept itself is intriguing.

Icelandic photographer Thomsen has spent the last several years documenting the transformation of undeveloped areas around Reykjavic into suburban developments. He calls this process “nature being transformed into environment”.

This distinction between ‘nature’ and ‘environment’ is an interesting one. The conservation movement is in the habit of equating ‘nature’ and ‘the environment’.  ‘Environmentally-friendly activities’ are defined as those activities which contribute to preserve some concept of nature. By ‘environment’ Thomsen clearly means something different. He means the human built environment or maybe a better phrasing would be the environment in which people choose to live. For the most part, human beings have become incapable of living in ‘nature’. Rather we have to live in a built environment with all the comforts and services that brings with it. Thomsen documents the process by which a ‘natural’ space is converted into an environment in which people can live.

Thomsen does not explicitly make a value judgement about the events he is documenting. However, many people viewing this and similar work would, today, interpret these developments as being ‘destructive’ of nature and wilderness in the interests of yet more suburban development. This interpretation is, however, a very recent cultural way of looking at development. Until relatively recently (late 19th century), most art portrayed human expansion as a positive event – the taming and civilizing a wild and dangerous wilderness. The painting below epitomizes this perspective as civilization hovers over America moving from the already tamed and civilized East (on the right side of the painting) to the still wild and dangerous West (on the left of the image).

Only recently have we realized that our living environment can only continue to exist within a larger context – the larger environment of a healthy ecosphere. This has resulted in a progressive change from our view of development from ‘civilizing’ to ‘destructive’. Thomsen’s use of a language that contrasts ‘nature’ with an ‘environment’ that we can actually live in brings back the idea of development as a civilizing influence even as his images convey human intrusion and landscape destruction.

For many people it is difficult to understand, let alone empathize with, technical statements like “loss of habitat”. This advertizing campaign from the charity Born Free aims to bring this issue into the more human terms of ‘homelessness’.

Using images of animals placed in the context of human homelessness, the campaign tries to make clear that ‘loss of habitat’ represents the same type of disenfranchisement seen in people who have lost their homes or have otherwise been rendered homeless.

A clever approach that moves away from the distancing and often incomprehensible techno-speak of the conservation community to frame the issue in human terms and, hopefully, make it more relevant. It would be useful if some information were to be collected on the impact of this creative campaign.

The images in Gregory Colbert’s Ashes and Snow remind us that animals have always had a mystical place in the world of humans.

Started in 1992, Ashes and Snow is a long term project in which photographer and film-maker Gregory Colbert works towards “rediscovering the common ground that once existed when people lived in harmony with animals.” Colbert has created a set of romanticized images of people interacting with wild animals in a largely mystical ambiance.

The whole project – a set of images of people interacting closely with wild animals – has a sense of unreality. Yet it is this very unreality that, in its metaphorical approach, transports us somewhere that generates a strong feeling of human-animal connection.

Looking at these images makes us all feel, at some level, that we would like to be able to interact with these wild animals in this way ourselves; to be able to get close and intimate with these spectacular beings.

But of course, in our cities and suburbs, we have all become remote from animals and, in a modern, techno-scientific world, all mystical connection with animals has been broken. In this way, Colbert’s work harks back to a lost world that, however hard we try, we are likely never able to regain.

Ashes and Snow is a large scale traveling exhibit that has already visited many major cities and has won near-universal acclaim and recognition and many awards.

In a modern world with its ever-increasing distance between the human and the natural, we cannot regain what Gregory Colbert has shown us that we have lost – part of our human soul. The only question is how much more are we willing to lose.

“These industrial environments are so desensitizing in that you, even if you are an animal lover, become complaisantly accepting of the fact that the live beings are only raw materials for mass commodity production. This needs some serious questioning.”

These are some of the thoughts of New York Based artist Miru Kim in relation to her latest series “The Pig That Therefore I Am”. Bringing us face to face with the harsh, inhumane industrial environment of modern, large scale pig farming, Kim explores the experience of coming close to these pigs who are treated as “product”.

Commenting on the physiological closeness between pigs and humans that makes them, for instance, candidates for use in xenotransplantation, Kim explores her ability to get close to these pigs through skin to skin contact. Much like lovers feel an intimate sense of connectedness when lying skin to skin, so Kim tries to explore this experience with pigs – lifting them out of their commodity status in the farm to a position of intimacy. “When two bodies come in contact–each of them touching and being touched at the same time–the souls meet and interweave on the skin, and the subject and the object become one.”

Maybe the pig farm is a mere illustration of our modern relationship with ‘nature’ or all of that which is not human.  The transformation of ‘nature’ to commodity is not limited to farm animals but extends to almost every aspect of the natural world – from national parks and wilderness areas that are products for tourist consumption or for the accumulation of scientific knowledge, to the very commoditization of the word ‘natural’ that comes splattered on every product packaged in a green plastic bottle.

Our relationship with and dependence on nature is there for all to see. But maybe in an industrialized, technological world with an ever growing human population, it is inevitable that nature becomes industrialized. Kim’s work reminds us that sometimes it may be worth spending time exploring any residual deeper connection we might have with the non-human.

I recently visited an exhibition of the work of Sanna Kannisto and bought the recently published book about her work. The work of this young Finnish artist is fascinating. It questions how, in order to understand and describe, science has to simplify and can never hope to capture the true complexity of life.

The body of work that Sanna has accumulated reproduces the methods of field scientists. She takes items – birds, plants, other animals – out of where they normally live and uses a makeshift field studio to photograph them. Her photographs are designed to emphasize the fact that these creatures have been isolated, their existence simplified, so that we can observe and study them – and attempt to understand something about them.

In Sanna’s images, the artificiality of the setting in which these animals and plants are “studied” is striking.  It serves to highlight the artificiality that we construct when studying nature. Even as science pretends that it is transmitting some form of reality, these images highlight that science, like all else we do, is a human-constructed, cultural framework that simply represents one way of seeing the world.

Simple additions like a ruler or some other human method of observation and measurement serve to highlight the objectification of these creatures as objects of scientific study.

The images avoid, in many cases, any attempt to be aesthetically pleasing – they are supposed to be “scientific” examinations not romantic imagery. Many of the images are then simply labeled with the scientific names of the animal or plant that is photographed – a statement that seems to stamp the supposed scientific authority of “truth” and “knowledge” on to the image. It is as though, in clearly labeling a natural object with a scientific name, someone is saying, with the force of an authority that cannot be challenged, “this is what this is – we understand it and know everything about it”.

Images of her field studio further highlight the artifice of the method of “study”.

Contrasting these images of simplified (and maybe simplistic) artifice, are some images (below) that attempt to show the impenetrable complexity of the tropical rain forest. The messy, confusing, incomprehensible nature of the “immense disorder” of whole forest is juxtaposed with the clinical, artificial simplification of the individual studied objects.

Steve Baker in his essay introducing the monograph of Kannisto’s work summarizes the project as being intended  “..to represent – and, simultaneously, to acknowledge the impossibility of representing in any conventional manner – the baffling complexity of the tropical rainforest”.

It is clear from this work, that it is not only science which has to simplify in an attempt to comprehend. We end up much more drawn to clean simplicity of the images of the isolated bird or plant than the chaotic image of the unadulterated forest. Imagery – and all the arts – also simplify in an attempt to allow us to comprehend. The complexity of nature that is all around us is impossible for us humans to understand. We need to chop it up, simplify it and create limited, artificial models and languages of description in an attempt to gain some sort of comprehension. We create limited, though useful, ways of seeing.  The danger comes when the scientist, the artist, the economist, the anthropologist, the historian or anyone else starts to believe that his particular way of seeing represents the unassailable “truth”. Sanna Kannisto’s work gives the lie to any such self-delusion.

Whether or not Stezaker had this in mind when, scalpel and glue in hand, he created these collages, Badger has a point. We fetishize natural beauty spots and turn them into a product for our consumption – whether as romanticized image or as a pilgrimage destination for the faithful. The product is starting to become so valuable and so rare that, like a unique painting or crown jewel, it is now surrounded by fences and patrolled by guards with mere people only allowed in under strictly controlled circumstances – and after having bought their ticket.

Little or none of the “Nature” that we consume is ‘real’, ‘unspoilt’, ‘genuine’ or whatever else we choose to call it. Armies of scientists and technical specialists work every day to ‘conserve’ it and keep it beautiful and ‘natural’ in much the same way, suggest Stezaker’s images, as we have armies of plastic surgeons working to conserve celebrities’ faces and bodies.

Yet, Nature is a product that many of us still want to have and want to consume – in one form or another. The character, shape and form of that product has changed and will continue to change over time. We will adapt to those changes but, I suspect, we will continue to seek and enjoy that product and will continue to want it to be available.

Robin Schwartz is a friend. But that’s not why her work is on this blog. It is here because, for many months, I have been looking for work that describes a positive relationship between us and the non-human rather than the ubiquitous work that castigates ad nauseam the damage we are doing to our environment.

Robin’s series, Amelia’s world is one such body of work. It is humanistic and post-humanistic at the same time. It shows Ameila, Robin’s daughter, displaying a comfort and special affinity with a wide variety of animals – companion animals and more exotic ones too.

Last weekend I was at a gathering where some young kids were uncomfortable in the presence of a boisterous young puppy. As we get more and more urbanized,  any meaningful contact with the non-human (or that which is not constructed by humans) is disappearing. In many so-called developed countries – and especially in the United States – over-protective parents bring up kids to be wary of anything that has not been fully processed, sanitized and otherwise rendered synthetic. Dogs should not be touched – they are dirty or dangerous or both. All other animals belong behind bars lest kids have contact with them and possibly receive some minor scratch.

In this culture, Robin’s photographs of a child in happy and relaxed contact with many different animals seem unusual and otherworldly if not altogether a little surreal. What an indictment of where we have got to in our self-centered and self-referential cultural prisons.

Robin is not particularly trying to make a point with these images (though I think she should!). Robin explains: “I am driven to depict relationships with animals but the photographs are not documents; they are evidence of the invented worlds that we explore and the fables we enact together. Photography gives us the opportunity to access our dreams, to discover the extraordinary.”

“The world that my daughter and I explore is one where the line between human and animal overlaps or is blurred.”

What feelings do you personally get when you view these images? I find them simultaneously uplifting and sad - sad because it seems so unreal in today’s world that children can have this sort of relationship with animals. For some they may generate anxiety – maybe imagining their own child so ‘dangerously’ exposed to these beasts.

Will our culture ever be able to regain any sort of affinity with the non-human? In a few years time will these images seem even more surreal than they seem today. Who knows, our self-absorption may go so far that Robin will have to stop making these images for fear of being arrested for exposing her child to the dangers of something that is not yet dead and safely packaged.

The dead bird above was labeled as “home decoration”.

Photographer Taryn Simon spent 5 days at JFK Airport in New York photographing goods seized by the US postal service and the US Customs and Border Protection. She compiled over 1000 images for her series “Contraband”.

Rare and threatened animal species protected through CITES – the convention that protects trade in endangered species; or plants and animals that could become invasive when introduced into the US were among the items photographed.

Deer Antlers - CITES prohibited

It is easy for us to think that threats to endangered species are local issues somewhere far away from our daily lives. But a good proportion of it is driven by demand for animal parts or animals for decoration or collection in wealthy countries.  Taryn Simon’s series shows that there is demand for these products just like there is for counterfeit Viagra, illegal recreational drugs and all sorts of other items that she photographed during a brief stay.

South African cycad plant - CITES listed

Let’s face it. The above image of Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bundchen wearing a dress made out of water is more likely to draw attention to the vital importance of water to our lives than yet another picture of a polluted river or another attempt at heart rending with a child in Africa standing by a dry water pump.

Gisele Bundchen has taken environmental issues to heart. In 2009 she was appointed UN Goodwill Ambassador for the Environment.

For the last few years, advertising campaigns for her own Ipanema line of sandals have been associated with images and actions in support of environmental issues and initiatives.  The above campaign was the first – and the best. The impact of this imaginative and creative use of water, the glamorous image and the metaphorical use of the idea that our body is water all combine to create a highly impactful and emotive image. The campaign was in aid of a campaign to stop damage to the Xingu river.

Later campaigns (below) supported the work of SOS Mata Atlantica in support of the Atlantic forests while the latest campaign is focused on supporting efforts to combat climate change.

These campaigns have what it takes to have an impact in today’s world: artistic imagination, eye-catching imagery, celebrity culture and, above all a positive feel rather than more doom and gloom telling us all what bad people we are.

David Maisel’s work spans many different project over many years. One of his interests is in documenting through aerial photographs the impact that Man has on the landscape.  The image above is from “The Mining Project” where he explores the effect of mining in “undoing of the landscape, in terms of both its formal beauty and its environmental politics.” Like other artists (eg Edward Burtynsky – previously reviewed in this blog), Maisel explores how aesthetic beauty can be created out of destructive and polluting processes.

Examining landscapes from The Great Salt Lake (above) to his project “The Forest” where he examines patterns created by floating logs and clear cut forests (below), Maisel draws us into unknown (and maybe unknowable) landscapes using images that “are charged by both their profane beauty and their ethically questionable nature.”

Below: Image from The Lake Project: “the stuff of California legend: a story of engineers, politicians, and big land owners working together to divert water to the rapidly growing desert city of Los Angeles, generating a thriving agricultural industry and an environmental disaster in the process.”