The work of Daniel Beltrá first came to my attention when his photograph, “Still Life in
Oil” (see below) won him the “Wildlife Photographer of the Year” award in the
prestigious international “Wildlife Photographer of the Year” competition in
2011. His portfolio of six images, “The Price of Oil”, documenting the
aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon blowout in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010,
in which 11 people lost their lives and five million barrels of crude oil were
released into the environment, won the corresponding “Wildlife Photojournalist
of the Year” award. This book, Beltrá’s first, features 27
of his photographs documenting the Deepwater Horizon disaster, together with a
short essay (“Sublime Melancholy”) by Barbara Bloemink.
Beltrá is a
Spanish freelance photojournalist with a particular interest in covering
environmental issues. He now works in the USA where he regularly undertakes
commissions for Greenpeace. He is also the featured photographer for my
critical essay (Assignment 3), so naturally I was very interested to purchase
and study this book.
All bar one of the photographs in
the book were taken from the air, over a period of one month, looking down on
the attempts to deal with and disperse the massive oil slick. The exception (“Still
Life in Oil”) shows oiled brown pelicans awaiting a second bout of cleaning (below) and
brings home the consequences of the disaster on the natural world. This image
was, in my view, a very necessary part of Beltrá’s award-winning six
image portfolio. At the time, Beltrá described this image as “an icon of the
disaster”.
Daniel Beltra
The remaining images could be
viewed as “landscape abstracts”. The colourful patterns created by the oil, the
chemical dispersants used to treat it and the flames caused by burning it, the
boundaries with unaffected areas of ocean, the passage of ships through the affected
area, the effects of waves on the oil and dispersants and the reflections of
sunlight produce some beautiful, stunning results. Sometimes there is no
evidence of man’s presence, whilst in other photographs small boats,
helicopters or (in the case of the image below) a relief well disturb the
apparent tranquillity of the scene.
Daniel Beltra
Of these images Beltrá
has commented that: “It’s a route to understanding that doesn’t depend on
shock………if the image is aesthetically appealing, people are likely to stop and
look at the caption”. His earlier appalling yet aesthetically appealing aerial
images, showing the destruction of rainforests and their replacement by palm
oil plantations, convey a similar message.
The beautiful
photographic illustrations in this book (many spread across two pages)
strengthen, but do not add to the environmental message carried by the original
set of six images. The photograph of the pelicans becomes more of an “outlier”
in this set and I wonder whether Beltrá took any other photographs presenting
the environmental disaster from an alternative perspective. As time goes by and
memories fade, this collection of photographs, beautiful as they are, will lose
a lot of its power to persuade and to provoke change. Indeed, perhaps only the
pelicans will remain to warn us of this example of the side-effects of man’s
desire to control and dominate every aspect of the natural world. The essay by
Barbara Bloemink emphasizes this point, using the history of the development of
marine art to demonstrate how the balance of power between nature (the sea) and
culture has shifted: where once we were in awe of the power of the sea, now we
have the power to wound and damage it. Soon we will have the power to control
every aspect of our environment, including the sea. However, by mistreating and
neglecting this environment we will surely destroy the planet and take
ourselves with it.
The photographs in
this book demonstrate how a beautiful and aesthetically pleasing series of
images can successfully raise the profile of serious issues within the public
domain. Indeed, this approach could be more effective than the alternative of
scaring us with images of destruction. The photographs are great to look at
(and even better when witnessed in an exhibition rather than over two sides of
an A4-sized book), but I am a little surprised that only one image, of the
oiled brown pelicans, offers a different perspective on the tragedy. Is this an
effective counterbalance to the aerial photos or, indeed, should it have been
excluded from the book? I’m not sure.
Learning Points, Future Work and References
Finding ways of making
documentary images aesthetically appealing often strengthens their interest.
Beltrá produced a set of six images for the “Wildlife Photojournalist of the
Year” award consisting of five aerial images and one of the oiled pelicans. The
pelican image provided a strong counterpoint to the less challenging aerial
images: I have noted this for my major project work. Objects (e.g. boats) that
are very small within the frame can nevertheless be a dominant feature in a
photograph, particularly when they are disturbing an abstract pattern.
Book Details (Amazon):
No comments:
Post a Comment