This interview originally appeared on Climate Visuals as part of my consulting work.

On the eve of the United Nations 23rd climate change conference (UNFCCC) in Bonn, Germany, Climate Visuals spoke with German photographer Barbara Dombrowski. Ms. Dombrowski will be hosting an exhibition of her photography project Tropic Ice at the Künstlerforum during the conference. Tropic Ice combines portraits from the Amazon and Greenland’s indigenous peoples to “connect the two extreme climate zones” and to raise awareness about the people affected by climate change and our connections to them.

Barbara Dombrowski – greenlandic Lady with seal coat and young Shuar with parrot

The following excerpts from our conversation have been edited for clarity, language and length.

CV: What inspired you to take a different approach to climate change visual communication as demonstrated in Tropic Ice?

BD: One important thing is that I am always interested in people, this is the point where I always start. It was clear that I was making this story about climate change and people. I thought for years about how I should photograph it. For me it was clear that I didn’t want to show catastrophe. I know that it is too much for people when every day the news is filled with all these catastrophes. You are touched, but you are not that touched because it is too far from your own reality. I thought, I have to tell this story in a different way, I have to show people and their life situation. With that, hopefully I can build empathy for these people. The only thing that will bring us to action is empathy, thinking about life situations, their life situation, your life situation, or that of your children.

Barbara Dombrowski – Achuar José under the holy tree and Anda the drumdamcer from Kulusuk

CV: Was it difficult to get Tropic Ice funded and accepted by photo editors?

BD: It was really a long stony walk. This is a personal project and I started with this idea. I’m a professional photographer and when I had made enough money I began this project. The biggest sponsor in this project is me. I had magazines that printed little side stories to help with the financing of this project. A printing company donated the canvasses so the installation component was a success. I crowdfunded. It was a mixture of many things. But, it is a stony road. I spoke to many companies and there was no big company that said ‘OK, this is a very important issue, we will help you.’

Barbara Dombrowski – Tomasine from Tinetiqilaaq and Entsaqa the Achuar Medicineman

CV: Do you feel that your project is accessible to a wide audience or to a subsection of society that is already convinced on climate change?

BD: I think I can touch a wider audience. What I really want to do is touch people and get them to act for themselves. They have to think about their own reality and do what they think is necessary. At my exhibitions, people from very different life situations have said ‘I understood the moment I saw the pictures’. Many people have told me it is a great project and I think that they are reacting to the portraits of the people.

Barbara Dombrowski –
the Achuar under the holy ceibo and the hunter in the kajak with iceberg
as installation on iceberg

CV: In general, the iconography of climate change is pretty limited. In your opinion, what is the greatest barrier to improving this visual representation? In other words, why are people still using polar bears to illustrate climate change when the topic touches so many lives?

BD: I think it is just easy. When they think about climate change you have this icon of a polar bear and it is just easy. What I experience in my professional life is that there is always a lack of communication between the photographer and commissioner. There are so many people involved before it gets to the photographer that everything is already decided. If they would have spoken with me before, then we could have brainstormed and created better imagery.

Commissioners are not taking this step, they are not going out and involving the professional photographers. And they often just use something they find on the net and this is the worst part of it. There are so many professionals out there and they have so much creativity and no one really asks for it. It can’t just be a situation of, ‘I have this brochure, oh shit, I need a picture which shows climate change. Hmm, I don’t have any money, let’s use a polar bear.’

Interview by Robert van Waarden

Images by Barbara Dombrowski

Cover image – 6 Representives of the Achuar and the Greenlanders on an iceberg in Greenland

This interview originally appeared on Climate Visuals as part of my consulting work.

“A lot of the issues facing environmental and climate change photography are facing the stock imagery industry as a whole. There is a lack of education on image rights, people just want images quickly and they want to move on with their day. Which makes sense, I totally get that. But there is little value placed on the good images out there.” Larry Westler.

Larry Westler is the content director at Aurora Photos. Behind him, in the agency’s roster, are some of the world’s best visual creatives focusing on the outdoors and the environment. Aurora markets their imagery to buyers all over the world and Climate Visuals has partnered with them to bring you the Aurora Collection.

When communicators need an image to illustrate something, they often turn to stock agencies. From big players like Getty to smaller specialised collections like Aurora, these companies hold the keys to our visual language. So, what roadblocks exist within this industry that are hindering a better visual language for climate change? We asked Larry:

“A number of climate change organisations – editorial websites, NGOs or textbook publishers for example – have come to us recently and they don’t have any budget for images. Which makes it really hard.

We have these photographers, who are professional photographers, trying to make a living by shooting and it is very difficult to sell the professional images to these companies, even at a discounted non-profit rate. Some of them are just asking for donations for credit. We are put in a hard position because we want to be able to help but we can’t for the most part.

Extrapolating from that I assume that this is a big problem throughout the industry. Many clients looking for images to portray [climate change] either do not have a budget or are not valuing the visuals as much as they should. So it is harder for them to get professional images, harder for them to portray whatever issue they are working on at that moment.

This is then reflected in what kind of images are submitted to us and what kind of images are out there. We are a capitalist society and if there is no pay off for shooting an image, photographers by and large are not going to shoot it.”

Essentially the push for free imagery is creating a race to the bottom, one which favours certain clichés and a belaboured (melting ice, polar bears) subject matter. When we undervalue imagery and take from the bottom of the pile we lose a key opportunity to connect with our audience and we continue to reinforce the narrow visual language that currently dominates climate change coverage.

Go to any stock agency and type in ‘climate change’ and you will see that language on display. This is another roadblock according to Larry:

“If you go to a website and you type in climate change, you get a lot of polar bears, and perhaps those fake scientists in those fake labs. This is a curation issue. How is the stock agency accepting images, how are they presenting that sort order for their clients? And again, what is being valued? If climate change photography is a small percentage of their sales then they are not going to prioritise those clients as much as they would big ad agencies or magazines.

How do we get these images that are 10-15 years old in front of buyers where they might be relevant again? How do we organise it to enable a better search? How do we organise it so that when you type in ‘X environmental issue’ or ‘climate change’ you don’t just get thousands of the exact same result?

The way to do that is through more specific searches and radiating outwards. It is using words in combination, like ‘environment & bees’ or ‘climate change & oil’. It then becomes a matter of how do you keep refining the search engine? How do you keep refining the image selection and the value you are putting on your images and how do you educate the users of the website?”

At Aurora they have tried to alleviate this issue with their ‘Focus on the Environment’ collection. This is a curated and growing body of over 3800+ images that focuses not only on the ‘classic’ environmental imagery but also on the lesser recognised stories. It is a good example of how agencies can be proactive in educating their clients.

It remains to be seen how stock agencies will continue to engage to dismantle these roadblocks. One thing is a given: as the gatekeepers to our visual language, stock agencies play a big role in making good climate change imagery accessible and valued.

This interview originally appeared on Climate Visuals as part of my consulting work.

On our quest to build a new visual language for climate change, Climate Visuals is partnering with top photo agencies around the world to bring you imagery that showcase our principles for good visual communication.

One of our partners is laif, a leading German photo agency for photojournalism, magazine and travel photography.

We took a few moments to speak with Peter Bitzer, the Managing Director, to get his thoughts on climate change communication and the barriers we face in improving it. Peter has been working in the photo industry since 1989 and has been the Managing Director of laif for 24 years.

The visual representation of climate change has changed a lot in those years and he feels that image users and creators are becoming more discerning.

“There is a growing interest [in the climate issue], especially in the last two to three years. Not only are media outlets using one picture to illustrate the issue, but we see a demand for more in-depth reportages of the various aspects of climate change,” says Peter.

“This includes reportages not only on the causes of climate change, but on the consequences as well. The more a reportage can visually explain new aspects of the climate issue, the more the chance it has of getting published.”

However, he still feels that most media outlets in Germany could better explore the depth that imagery and reportage can contribute to their publications, and in turn their audience.

That is why laif has partnered with Climate Visuals. The need to educate and develop a new visual language lies with both the user and the seller and Peter hopes that initiatives like the Climate Visuals laif collection can help with this education.

An extract from laif brochure

Laif has also put a focus on exhibitions, books and brochures (see extract of brochure above) about climate change.

Peter hopes that these projects will help inform clients about the choices available when they need to illustrate climate change. This focus has been driven by the submissions from their photographers and from the industry demand.

Peter understands this as a common sense business decision as the world comes to recognize the challenge of climate change.

However, Peter is convinced that the key to more diverse visuals on climate has to come from public demand:  “If the interest in climate change is strong enough to put all the aspects of climate change on the table, there will also be interest in the media to use new, more compelling imagery.”

Banner image credit: Ulutuncok/laif – Afforestation in Ethiopia

Over 2700 people visited the opening night of the Along the Pipeline exhibit in Montreal on Saturday, Feb. 28. The opening coincided with Montreal’s Nuit Blanche. I am blown away by the amount of people that came to see this photography project focusing on the Energy East pipeline proposal. Packed from 8pm to 2am, visitors examined the photos, read the stories, and sampled the oil inspired cocktails. What an evening!

The exhibit runs until March 17, 2015 at the Maison du Développement Durable, 50 Sainte Catherine O, Montreal. Don’t miss it.

Credit: David Champagne