Habitat destruction: the ecological crisis

Summary

Habitat destruction: Prairie

Since 1978, all of my work is connected by an abiding interest in and love for prairie. This interest began more than forty years ago when I photographed the Fent prairie, an 80 acre virgin prairie near Salina, Kansas, where I lived. I explored Fent and other prairies for the next eight years, which introduced me to the wondrous balance of an undisturbed ecosystem, and has informed all of my work to date. …

… After spending eight years photographically exploring the fragmentary but still extant undisturbed prairie … I [suddenly] realized that the inhabited prairie was part of the body of the prairie and I could not understand prairie if I didn't look at the whole of it [and] I began to photograph the rest of the prairie. …

… In Ancient Prairies, I’m visiting prairie remnants once again. Recently, in late May, I went back to the Fent prairie to photograph its intricate botanical complexity after having photographed the effects of fracking in North Dakota and petcoke pollution in Southeast Chicago, which both showed human disregard for land and its people. I’m deeply disturbed by our seeming inability to confront the current and impending disasters of our intensive fossil fuel overuse and the climate change our lives are provoking. This work is about remembering the wisdom and beauty of intact prairies. It is about SEEING them. These prairies would not exist without human care, and Ancient Prairies serves as a tribute to the kinship between humans and nature.

Habitat destruction: Forest

The Brazilian countryside is being filled with eucalyptus. The enormous emphasis given to steel exports, driven by successive governments, is only one of the several reasons for the deforestation of the Cerrado, the Brazilian savanna, and thus the Atlantic Forest, and even of the Amazon.

Several international steel companies established in the country purchase large pieces of land and replace the natural vegetation with eucalyptus, an exotic, fast-growing type of wood used to make charcoal, an important ingredient in the melting of iron ore needed to make steel.