In the small slither of time human civilisation have been on this planet we have made an unmistakable impact on the planet. The amount of changes humans have made to the planet has now led scientist to give this period of time its own name; The Anthropocene, also known as the ‘Age of Humans’. The Anthropocene era includes things such as the rise of fossil fuels and urbanisation. This has caused a cascade of effects on the landscape, climate, species and even our own way of life. Humans are actively shaping the planet and is something that our own species needs to decide on what we want our future to look like? The human impact is the most powerful influence on our global economy, however, has the human species gone too far to be able to make a change?
Visual activism/culture is a way to create change within our society, this is usually done through a form of art. The whole point in visual activism is to notice that something is wrong and then change it; human civilisation is having a negative global impact on our planet and this needs to be changed.
During this essay, I am going to be looking at the ways in which just one species has had an impact on the way in which our planet has evolved into this new geologic age, even with the knowledge that we are activity shaping our planet and how photography and visual activism is addressing these global issues. Photographers and activists trying to air to the world what is causing this cascading effect on our beautiful planet and how they are communicating this with human civilisation and why change needs to happen else a recovery is never going to happen before it’s all too late.
One of the main impacts humanity is having on the environment and landscapes in the Anthropocene is environmental pollution that is being released into the air. A damaging alteration to our surroundings is due to by-product of several human actions. Human activities result in the emission of at least 160 tons of atmospheric sulphur dioxide per year, more than twice the amount of Earth’s naturally produced emissions (Mikhail, 2016:211). It is estimated that 40-50% of rubbish/materials being burned is made up of carbon, meaning that Carbon Dioxide (CO2) is the major gas that is being emitted by burning rubbish in some countries. Other emissions, such as power plants and cars, are still having very big impact on the global scale. Burning rubbish is a significant pollution source in some developing countries often due to lack of tax bases and organisation needed to put these procedures into place (Thompson, Climate Central, 2014). An example of this is Pieter Hugo’s photograph David Akore, Agbogbloshie Market,
Accra, Ghana (2010).
Hugo, a South African photographer, has been capturing the people who work in a rubbish dump of outdated electronic technology in Ghana. The dump consists of cast-off electronics mostly from Western countries. These Western countries generate about 50 million tons of digital waste and 75% of which is not recycled correctly, leading to being discarded in these sort of dumps (Bogre, Mastering Photography, 2011). The boy within the photograph, surrounded by smoke and fire, is burning off plastic coatings on the technology to extract copper and other metals, in doing this procedure they end up breathing in dangerous smoke, which contains lead, mercury and hydrogen cyanide, both bad for their lungs and the environment. Pieter Hugo is addressing the damage and impact that human waste is having on the environment and on our own bodies due to the toxic chemicals and pollution that is leaking into the atmosphere.
Rachel Solnit states that:
“Climate change is global-scale violence against places and species,
as well as against human beings.” (Solnit, The Leap, 2015).
As Solnit states, not only is climate change within the Anthropocene effecting the environment and the people on the planet but also the species that are living across the globe. It has been found that the modern species loss is now reaching a humungous rate of 140,000 species per year (Dawson, Extinction: A Radical History, 2016). Within the Anthropocene a major reason in which nature and animals are disappearing and becoming extinct is due to the wiping out of habitats due to human impact on the environment. One way in which animals are becoming extinct is due to the excessive use of nuclear testing and being exposed to radiation, this human impact on the environment is killing off nature. Over two-thirds of fisheries have been depleted, exploited, or over-exploited due to human harvesting, the extinction of over a quarter of bird species is due to human involvement within the environment (Mikhail, 2016:211), human waste, such as industrial rubble is another way in which species are being killed off due to the actions of human civilisation.
An example of this is Richard Misrach. Misrach began an ongoing photographic series in the 1980’s entitled Desert Cantos, in which he recorded numerous ways in which man have an impact on the desert. Dead Animals #156 1987/1988, is part of his body of work, which is based within a subcategory named ‘The Pit’, which was seen to be one of his most controversial pieces of work within the whole of the
Desert Cantos series.
Within figure 2 it shows pigs, cows, sheep and even horses that have died from ‘mysterious causes’, however, many believe that the real cause of death to be the fallout from the Upshot-Knothole nuclear tests in Desert Cantos that year (Misrach, 1987) and then dumped in the grounds throughout Nevada and throughout the West. All the animals lay in countless stages of decay. The places around the animals living area is distributed with industrial wreckage, including things such as spilled oil and other questionable liquids, metal and plastic – an indication of our very damaged environment due to the lack of care from human civilisation. Misrach’s work displays both beauty and destruction caused by humans, creating a thin line between aesthetics and politics, displaying what human civilisation is doing to the innocent species around us.