The vision “When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence.”
Photographer and environmentalist Ansel Adams
The spotlight
As a writer, I obviously have a fondness for words. I believe in their power — while also recognizing their limitations. Much as we try to “show, not tell” through the written word, an article can’t quite approximate letting someone see or experience something for themselves. Photos and videos, on the other hand, come pretty darn close.
Visual storytellers have to be immersed in the scenes they capture, up close to the people, animals, plants, and landscapes they create images of. They document things that many people otherwise wouldn’t get to see with their own eyes. It’s a powerful medium, with a well-established history of stirring viewers to care about climate change and conservation.
But high-quality, thought-provoking photography and film is also time-consuming and expensive to create, putting it out of reach for many would-be climate communicators and storytelling organizations. It’s a problem that Kogia, a nonprofit media library, is attempting to solve.
The library offers photos and video clips, free of charge, to scientists, conservation organizations, artists, activists, and others. “Our mission has been to democratize access to this media in a way, and to elevate the voices of those who are on the front line of conservation and just give them the best tools possible for them to tell their stories,” said Nessim Stevenson, a filmmaker and photographer who founded the project along with his cousin, and fellow photographer, Karim Iliya.
They saw a great need to make high-quality images more readily available to conservationists and mission-driven organizations as an essential communication tool. “I had a lot of nonprofits that were asking me for photos and videos to use as I was photographing underwater worlds — whales and turtles and manta rays and coral reefs, from the big animals to the little tiny creatures,” Iliya said.
He knew other environmental photographers must be getting the same types of requests, and wanted to create a platform that would enable these organizations to get the resources they needed to further their work, while easing some of the strain on individual creators fielding these requests.
More exposure
A parting shot
While showing the vibrance and beauty of marine wildlife and ecosystems, visual storytelling can also introduce a harsh juxtaposition with the threats those ecosystems face. This photo, for instance, shows an overhead view of an oil refinery off the coast of Long Beach, California. At first glance it looks peaceful, almost pretty. But a closer look reveals its sheer scale, and its nearness to the shoreline — where residents face some of the worst pollution in the country.
IMAGE CREDITS
Vision: Grist
Spotlight: Karim Iliya; Nessim Stevenson; Pier Nirandara, Sophie Hart, Kieth Ladzinski, Cedric Dageville, Michel Zoghzoghi, Raja Iliya
Parting shot: Karim Iliya
