One of the most powerful ways that photography can convey what's happening to our world is by offering the kind of perspective you can only get from on high. Indeed, many credit the Earthrise photo captured by astronaut William Anders during the 1968 Apollo 8 mission for sparking the modern ecological movement in the first place.
That same approach of seeing our world from above runs through much of the photography on show in Extinction: Renewal, Art of a Living Planet, a new exhibition opening at the Eden Project in Cornwall, England, this September.
The show brings together photography, film and sculpture within four themed zones: Extinction, Climate, Community and Renewal. The organisers describe this as "a journey from deep time into a more hopeful future".
Along that journey through time, photography's main contribution is in the present: how the world is now, not how it was or how we'd like it to be. And many of the photographs on show share an interesting approach: to see things as they really are, you first have to gain some altitude.
View from on high
Take Daniel Beltrá's shot of Iceland's Hvíta River, shown at the top of this page. Shot from above, its blues and golds – formed by a mixture of glacial meltwater and sediment – marble together in a way that resembles an abstract painting.
Also on show is Sebastião Salgado's aerial image of Alaska's Brooks Range (below), which brings this entire mountain range and its river system into a single composition that's awe-inspiring in its breadth and detail.
Paul Nicklen's drone shot of a polar bear crossing sea ice, meanwhile, strips out everything you'd have seen from ground-level: eye contact, a sense of human-animal scale, a sentimental feeling towards the subject.
What's left is a clean, almost geometrical composition, with the bear just a single white shape next to a crack in the ice. Somehow that makes it even more poignant, emphasizing its vulnerability against forces far larger than itself.
Richard Mosse pushes that sense of detachment even further with his shot of log barges from above. His use of infrared, rendering the vegetation red and water black, is an inspired decision, swapping objectivity for a clear editorial line in the visual itself.
Key takeaways
While many of these pictures are beautiful, this is not really about aesthetics, nor using drones just because they're fashionable. It's about pulling countless small details into a broader picture that reveals larger patterns and deeper truths.
And that fits well into the spirit of the show, which is less about doom, gloom and wringing our hands in despair, and more about providing solutions and a positive vision of the future.
The lesson for photographers here is clear. Whether you're shooting wildlife, landscapes or other natural phenomena, there's often an argument for stepping back, up and outwards from the detail, and seeing things from a wider perspective that can tell an altogether different story.
Extinction: Renewal, Art of a Living Planet runs at the Eden Project, Bodelva, St Austell, Cornwall, PL24 2SG. September 17-27, 10:00-17:00; September 28-October 16, 10:00-16:00, October 17-November 01, 10:00-17:00; November 02-January 03: opening times may vary.
