The Artist as Witness September 21 – December 1, 2024
Joel Sternfeld: When It Changed September 21 – December 1, 2024
Humanity’s impact on the natural landscape is undeniable even when human figures are not immediately visible.
This selection of works from the museum’s permanent collec- tion serves as a visual response to the exhibition “Joel Sternfeld: When It Changed.” Artists including Arthur Tress, Robert von Sternberg and Diane Farris illustrate how human enterprise has reshaped the natural landscape. Some works trace the entangle- ment of human life and environmental change. Others catalogue the environment’s natural processes of self-preservation and renewal. Sternfeld’s photographs focus on the people and dip- lomatic powers that have shaped the global response to climate change. The artists and works in this companion installation recenter the impacted landscapes and surreal scenes of our changing environments.
Curator: Kathryn Hill, associate curator of modern and contemporary art, with assistance by Mary Alice Smith (UGA ’24)
In late 2005, Montreal hosted the United Nations Climate Change Conference.
Government ministers, scientists, leaders of nongovernmental organizations and journalists gathered for this annual meeting of countries participating in the Kyoto Protocol, a policy aimed at reducing the emission of greenhouse gases. American photographer Joel Sternfeld gained access to the conference using newspaper credentials. He hoped to answer a question for himself: “I wanted to know if climate change was real.” What he found was worse than what he expected. “In the opinion of nearly all the participants, not only was climate change occurring, it was also about to reach a tipping point and become irreversible.” Using a telephoto lens from close-up, Sternfeld trained his camera on a range of participants to create an “archive of humanity” amid what was then a largely invis - ible ecological crisis. “I tried to take photographs of delegates at the moment when the horror of what they were hearing was visible on their faces. At stake, after all, is the continuation of Earth as a planet fit for us to live on.” Sternfeld published “When It Changed,” a book of these images, in 2007. It outlines alarming scientific discoveries, the actions and inactions of governments and corporations and increasingly extreme weather events. This exhibition presents the photo- graphs from that book. At this watershed moment in global en- vironmental history, and in the face of an ever-unfurling stream of evidence, Sternfeld is emphatic: we cannot say that we did not know that our world had changed.
Curator: Kathryn Hill, associate curator of modern and contemporary art, and Jeffrey Richmond-Moll, George Putnam Curator of American Art, Peabody Essex Museum
Arthur Tress (American, born 1940), “This Vegetation Has Died from the Sulfuric Slag..., Vicco, KY,” 1968. Double-weight fiber-based gelatin silver print on paper, 9 3/4 × 7 3/4 inches. Georgia Museum of Art, University of Georgia; Gift of J. Patrick and Patricia A. Kennedy. GMOA 2020.2074.
Joel Sternfeld (American, born 1944), “Yoahiaki Nishimura, Senior Staff, Central Research Institute of Electric Power Industry, Japan,” from the “When it Changed” series, 2005. Pigment print, 33 × 55 inches. Georgia Museum of Art, University of Georgia; Gift of an anonymous donor. GMOA 2024.13.
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