Introducing…”Nostalgia for Snow.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

OK, imagine this. It’s 2039 and the world has changed a lot more than the “experts” dared to allow 30 years before. Yes, people were talking about the possibility of huge amounts of methane being released as permafrost thawed all across the arctic and the models predicted, warned, about the feedback effects that would ensue. But, damn it, it actually happened, with vengeance, and we’re all sitting here now wondering why on Earth, during the short-lived global recession between 2008 and 2010, did we not waken up to what was happening. That was our last chance to abandon the growth paradigm, but we just couldn’t let go the side of the pool and now the water is getting very deep. Unfettered growth in a finite world is no longer an option.

Who knows for sure: it may happen. This project, Nostalgia for Snow, asks the viewer to imagine 30 years into the future, to allow that this scenario may roll out and to reflect now on how they will feel about what has changed, what has been lost. This is why the pictures are given various retro. treatments: don’t dismiss this as simple artifice – it is done to place them firmly in “the past”, of something conjured from deep memory. Yet they are taken today, or in recent years.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I focus on three particular themes:

- Sea bird populations that will disappear as currents change and food moves with them,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

- Alpine plant species that will be edged out of existence as snow lines creep up beyond summits,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

- and, of course, human cultural activities that are likely to change or cease as winters become black and we hide from the sun in summer.

As I add pictures to this collection, I’ll expand on how – and why – the look is created. This is a one-year project. So it should be completed in three…