EverydayClimateChange

Detail

Climate change refers to a broad range of global phenomena created predominantly by burning fossil fuels, which raise the level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, with severe dramatic effect on our daily life. These phenomena include the increased temperature trends – global warming – but also encompass changes such as sea level rise; ice mass loss in Greenland, Antarctica, the Arctic and mountain glaciers worldwide; shifts in flower/plant blooming; and extreme weather events.

The project EverydayClimateChange (ECC) began as an idea of James Whitlow Delano and is carried out by over 30 photographers from 6 different continents who work in every corner of the planet. Initially originated as an Instagram feed to raise awareness of the emergency of climate change all over the world, ECC soon turned into a traveling exhibition, which on this occasion offers the largest selection of photographs from the project ever displayed.

Assuming that photography is most powerful when it can communicate deeper meaning by freezing transience, EverydayClimateChange aims to present visual evidence that climate change doesn’t just happen “over there”, in far remote regions, but it is also happening “right here” and its various effects are visible all over the world. No other medium can better reveal deeper truths, than a camera can in the hands of someone who understands its unique potential.

As Berenice Abbott used to claim “photography helps people to see” Climate Change for some people is an abstract idea, greenhouse gases are invisible and all this makes climate change easy to ignore but not everyone has the luxury of not paying attention to it. People are already feeling it as droughts (a common plague in many areas in Africa, but also in more western regions like California, where, after 5 years the drought Emergency was finally over in 2017), wildfires and floods become more common.

ECC offers a wide and diversified view on climate change. Photographers come from the north, the south, the east and the west; and are as diverse as the cultures in which we were all raised. ECC presents the work of committed, enlightened photographers who share back stories, contextualizing not only the effects of climate change but also potential solutions to mitigate the effects of greenhouse gases on our world.

The pace of climate change, compared to the frenetic news cycle, is slow, greenhouse gases are invisible and all this makes climate change easy to ignore. The goal of the ECC and its Instagram feed is to show that no one anywhere is immune to effects of climate change. The goal is to reach beyond the cloistered photography world and the stuffy halls of academia to those who will be most effected by climate change: in other words, all of US.

A section of the exhibition is dedicated to the visual testimony of the actions on this topics undertaken over the years by the Municipality of Verona. The Civic Museum of Natural History, in fact, is monitoring the effects of climate change, such as the arrival of alien species and the disappearance of cold and glacial environments in the mountains of Verona. The Environmental Department has implemented a series of initiatives such as the laying of photovoltaic panels and the planting of trees for reforestation. Finally, the Municipal Administration has joined the Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy.