Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Is There Intelligent Life on Earth?

"…I think it’s an open question”, says environmental photographer Mark Edwards, UNEP Global 500 Award Winner. “We don’t know yet”.

By: Ida Bergstrøm, Stakeholder Forum

As two men were planting the first flag on the moon, Mark Edwards was lost on the outskirts of the Sahara desert, and subsequently rescued by a passing-by Tuareg nomad. ‘He was a bit like an Omar Sharif look-a-like’, Mark remembers. ‘It felt a bit like the opening sequence of Lawrence of Arabia.’ The 20-something budding photographer was taken to the Tuareg’s people, and from a tiny hut the rescuer emerged with two sticks, an umbrella and a cassette player. He made a fire, boiled tea and turned on the music; Bob Dylan’s abysmal ‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall’. ‘It was the most extraordinary experience. There were the stars, and knowing these guys were up there on the moon, and sitting with these dignified, graceful people, and listening to Bob Dylan sing about death and dying.’

37 years later…

The idea of illustrating each line of the lyrics to the song, which Dylan wrote during the Cuba crisis, with a photograph, was born that night. Having existed as an ongoing project for 37 years, always at the back of the mind of the British photographer, the seed sown in the

British photographer, the seed sown in the desert finally materialized into an exhibition, a book, a slide-show, and a tool of activism, in 2006. Currently located in the UN lobby, Mark Edwards’ ‘Hard Rain – Our Headlong Collision With Nature’ has travelled the world with its message of urgency and has so far been seen by over 10 million people. The book has been sent to presidents and prime ministers to exert pressure and push for action. For though photography is his medium of communication, Mark Edwards, by now a seasoned activist, is clear about what it is he wants to achieve with his images. ‘What the individual can do is limited. And of course I’ve flown a fair bit taking this exhibition around. But I have given careful thought to this, and I feel that if this exhibition can reach a lot of people it can have some effect. I’m in a fortunate position that I am able to campaign to put a huge pressure on politicians. I feel that is a great privilege.’

And the message is action; Now; The failure of democracy and capitalism, and the threat to humanity if we don’t rise to the challenges we have created for ourselves; ‘Unless we decarbonise energy, climate change is handcuffed to poverty, and we will be conscripted into it as well. And democracy will be one of the first victims of climate change.’

Powerful imprints

Marks photographs that accompany Dylan’s lyrics are extraordinary, beautiful and brutal. The image of the man in the rain carrying his dead wife through the village is particularly powerful. But not all the images mirror death and destruction. In fact, as Mark himself highlights several times, there is a certain dignity in his images that separate them from your usual sensationalized images of the poor. What is more, some of them harbour profound messages of hope. ‘There’s a picture of schoolgirls in a slum in Haiti. They just appeared suddenly, like butterflies, in the middle of one of the most dangerous and dreadful shantytowns in the world. The picture seemed to take itself. And they disappeared just as suddenly as the came. These children, so immaculately dressed and so clean, walking to school…I find them every bit as extraordinary as landing a man on the moon. They are the proof of our human potential’.

Rebel with a cause

So like Bob Dylan uses music as a vehicle for his message, so Mark Edwards uses photography. ‘The great thing about photography is that everybody in the world can look at photographs. There is no barrier. I think a lot of people feel excluded from looking at paintings in a gallery and enjoying them. In that sense photographs are like pop music. They are very accessible. And come in many shades. It’s a bit like, you can use photography to take pictures of pretty women. But you can also use these mediums in a significant way.’

For the man who used to stowe away on jumbo jets to satisfy his insatiable need to experience the world first hand, and who took ‘environmental’ pictures before the environmental movement had even taken shape, the CSD appears as ‘a very cumbersome kind of route’ to achieving the stated goals. ‘But it’s one of the many kind of approaches that perhaps will have some effect’, he adds. ‘What we’re facing now is the failure of democracy and capitalism to address serious long-term issues. If our leaders don’t get their act together and start acting in favour of the future…then I would say no, there is no intelligent life on earth.’

‘But it’s not enough that a few people try to do this. Everybody should be involved.’

Mark Edwards’ photo exhibition is to be seen in the UN lobby until June 12th. The slide show based on the project will be shown today at 6:15 in Conference room 4.