Albatross

For two decades my photographs and conceptual artworks have probed into the dark underbelly of our culture of mass consumption. Exploring the complexities of our many forms of waste, these series have attempted to edge-walk the line between beauty and horror, abstraction and representation, art and activism, and the visible and the invisible. I have been fortunate to exhibit and publish this work widely, and have been the recipient of Sierra Club’s Ansel Adams Prize for Conservation Photography, the Prix Pictet Commission Prize in Paris, and the GreenLeaf Award given by the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo. My film Albatross offers a love story about birds on a remote island in the Pacific whose bodies are filled with plastic. Albatross was honored in 2018 with the Planetary Health Film Prize in London.

Since the making of Albie, my work has turned in a new direction: toward the contemplation of beauty as a response to the mental chaos of our times. I have come to believe deeply in beauty’s transformative power, not as a form of avoidance, or a solution to any of our problems, but as a spacious container to hold our minds and hearts in clearer perspective. Beauty can help us stay connected on a basic level with Life itself, and with the wisdom and love that lie at the core of our humanity. Inspired by this philosophy, I have recently released several new photographic projects under the title Beauty Emerging, and a new film is in the early stages of production.