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126 Posts
Chatting the Pictures Video July 25, 2023

Chatting the Pictures: NYC’s Children of the Smoke

The sight of smoke descending on NYC was otherworldly. The emotional fallout from the Canadian wildfires, especially on children, was also.

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Notes Photo September 17, 2020

Whirling Fire Storm Photo: The New Unfathomable

Fire photos this ominous come at a premium. But this photo from California captures the new otherworldly state of the climate crisis.

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Notes Photo September 16, 2020

Global Heating and Fire: California Jumps the Gap

It's not just a bad fire season. These photos both symbolize and demonstrate how California has crossed a critical climate threshold.

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Chatting the Pictures Video September 10, 2020

Chatting the Pictures: Viral “Covid Meets California Firestorm” Photo

In our latest video, we discuss how this photo delivers a powerful commentary on COVID-19, and a compounding global climate crisis.

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Chatting the Pictures Video August 28, 2020

Chatting the Pictures: Iowa’s Derecho, Another Massively Destructive Climate Event

The photo circulated widely after the derecho in Iowa. In this highlight video, we discuss the contrast between beauty and destruction.

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Notes Photo February 3, 2020

Wedding Humor in the Age of Apocalypse

I noticed this picture from South Korea has been making the rounds again. It was taken as a (not-such-a-) joke photo at a wedding in Seoul in June 2015. At the time, the catalyst for the photo was the outbreak of the deadly MERS virus. Today, it strikes a...

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Notes Photo January 22, 2020

The Trump – Greta Thunberg Photo Crossings

Once again, young Greta Thunberg and Donald Trump find their way into the same international meeting photo. As the climate degenerates, we can expect more.

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Notes Photo December 4, 2019

“Beautiful” Violence in Climate Change Photography  

Abstract geometries and pleasing color palettes make it hard to understand the experience of harm.

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Notes Photo October 29, 2019

Climate Crisis: Are the Animals Mad at Us?

Between the heat and the photography, it’s hard not to process this as a portrait of six scorched and very pissed off water buffalo.

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Notes Photo October 28, 2019

The Visual Politics of AOC’s Green New Deal Posters

Mindful of the political environment, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's Green New Deal posters are fortified as much to counter anxiety as to elicit optimism.

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Notes Photo October 19, 2019

Creature from the Fossil Fuel Lagoon

Chavez's photo draws on fantasy and imagination and then combines those qualities with "human industry," in both senses of the term.

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Notes Photo October 7, 2019

Apocalypse (Then and) Now: Climate Crisis Channels the Bomb

On one level, the poster is just another creative climate change warning. On another, though, it’s a memory jolt to the boomers.

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Notes Photo September 21, 2019

Salt Chimneys

These Dead Sea formations called "salt chimneys" crystalize around freshwater streams. They appeared with the drop in water levels, but nobody knows why.

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Notes Photo April 29, 2019

How Climate Change is and isn’t Fueling the U.S. Border Crisis: These Pictures aren’t that Simple

With all the visual attention given to the "caravan," how powerful to see mass migration also depicted by people taking hold of a place.

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Notes Photo October 16, 2017

Has Climate Change Killed the California Dream?

California is used to the edge. With the multi-year drought and now these firestorms, however, I'm wondering if climate change has tipped the scale.

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Notes Photo September 12, 2017

Monster Hurricanes and Eco Disaster Photos: The Indecisive Moment

These eco disaster photos allow us to take account of the slow consequences of Harvey and Irma. The fact they defy closure is the whole point.

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Notes Photo August 31, 2017

Harvey Unprecedented? What About 2 Weeks Ago in Sierra Leone?

Although Harvey's impact seems to be mercifully smaller in ways than recent monster storms overseas, these events call for larger ways to scale them.

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Notes Photo April 5, 2017

Photography’s Limits in the Age of Trump’s EPA

On the capacities of photography to confront environmental crises. Especially now.

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