DILEMMAS IN THE DETAILS
THE CLIMATE IS YET ANOTHER GLOBAL CRISIS that affects us all in big ways and small. Sometimes we notice changes in weather patterns in our own cities and towns, or watch news reports on the decline of specific animal populations, or if we pass a garbage bin on the street full of single-use plastics, we can easily see how human activity is damaging and altering the natural world around us, wherever we live.
Photographs are instrumental in conveying the changes caused by human activity to the public. I’m so excited to present the work of Canadian photographers who have explored this subject in this edition. From adventure and conservation documentary work by Nick Hawkins, to artists like Rocio Graham and John Healey, this edition looks at different ways photographers take this issue on.
The photographic process itself is harmful to the planet, but creative and clever artists Bruce Hildesheim, Sanja Lukac, and Francis A. Willey have been experimenting, and I am SO excited to share their results of creating photographic prints using an eco-friendly darkroom process!
Thinking about how we could make some changes towards being more eco-friendly in our production process resulted in us facing some harsh realities. Sadly, the cost of eco-friendly materials is still considerably higher than their non-friendly counterparts. We made some tiny changes in this edition – you might or might not notice. One section of this print publication is printed on eco-friendly paper, and we found some eco-friendly polybags for mailing out our subscribers copies with. Yay! But these changes are nowhere near where we’d like to be. I’m looking forward to future innovations that will allow us to have it all: amazing quality reproductions that use affordable eco-friendly processes.
Looking ahead, the Winter 2021 issue will focus on photographic explorations of typologies (think Hilla and Bernd Becher). If you’ve got a subject you’ve been obsessed with, drop us a line.
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“We can’t save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed. Everything needs to change – and it has to start today.” — Greta Thunberg