Following his shocking
photographs of dead albatross chicks and the diet of plastic that killed them,
Chris Jordan’s new film is a call to action to repair our broken relationship
with planet Earth
Mon 12 Mar
2018 06.00 GMT
We are living in a plastic age
and the solutions may seem glaringly obvious, so why aren’t all 7.6 billion of
us already doing things differently? Shocking statistics don’t guarantee
effective change. So what’s the alternative? American photographer and
filmmaker Chris Jordan believes the focus should be on forcing people to have a
stronger emotional engagement with the problems plastic causes. His famous
photographs of dead albatross chicks and the colourful plastic they have
ingested serve as a blunt reminder that the planet is in a state of emergency.
While making his feature-length
film Albatross, Jordan considered Picasso’s approach: “The role of the artist
is to respect you, help you connect more deeply, and then leave it up to you to
decide how to behave.”
Most nature documentaries devote
their final few minutes to hopeful solutions, but Jordan avoids this. He simply
shines a light on the crisis facing the huge colonies of Laysan albatrosses on
the remote Pacific island of Midway. “There’s something so archetypal about these
legendary birds and seeing bright colours of ocean plastic against dead
sterility is a powerful symbol for our human culture right now. We’re in a
state of emotional bankruptcy,” says Jordan.
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