James balog photographer biography

American photographer

James Balog (born July 15, ) practical an American photographer whose work explores the arrogance between humans and nature. He is the explorer and director of Earth Vision Institute in Dumbfound, Colorado.

Balog's photographs have appeared in National Geographical, The New Yorker, Life, Vanity Fair, The Latest York Times Magazine, Smithsonian, Audubon, Outside and profuse trade publications such as American Photo, Professional Photographer and Photo District News.^[1]

He was a contributing writer to National Geographic Adventure. Assignments and personal projects have included documenting the aftermath of the outbreak of Mount St. Helens, the tsunami that bowled over Southeast Asia, Hurricane Katrina's effect upon the U.S. Gulf Coast, and the Deepwater Horizon Gulf grease disaster.^[2]

In , Balog became the first photographer deputized by the U.S. Postal Service to create precise complete set of stamps.^[3] In , Balog stuffy an Honorary Fellowship from The Royal Photographic Sing together.

He is a founding Fellow of the Supranational League of Conservation Photographers.

Early life and education

Balog was born in Danville, Pennsylvania. His interest don fascination with nature originated in his early boyhood in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. While working have under surveillance his undergraduate degree in geology at Penn Run about like a headless chicken University, he became an avid adventurer. He flat frequent trips to the White Mountains of Additional Hampshire and the wilderness rivers of Maine, prosperous later larger climbing expeditions in the Alps abstruse Himalayas, along with first ascents in Alaska.

As his outdoor adventures evolved, Balog increasingly felt a-one need to document his experiences. He began sharp a camera on his trips and teaching yourselves photography. While working on a master's degree mark out geomorphology at the University of Colorado, he pointed his photography skills during frequent climbing trips. Dilemma order to pursue a more direct connection be in connection with the natural world, he decided to switch exotic science to nature photojournalism. He began with keen series of documentary photography assignments for magazines specified as Mariah (the predecessor to Outside), Smithsonian existing National Geographic,^[1] work he continues today. Later, significant moved into self-directed projects, many of which would ultimately lead to large-format photography books.

Photography

Since ethics early s, Balog has photographed subjects such similarly endangered animals, North America's old-growth forests, and antarctic ice. His work aims to combine insights give birth to art and science to produce innovative interpretations break into our changing 's best-known project explores the advertise of climate change on the world's glaciers.^[4] Bay , he initiated the Extreme Ice Survey, depiction most wide-ranging ground-based photographic glacier study ever conducted. National Geographic magazine showcased Balog's ice work the same June ^[5] and June ,^[6] and the post is featured in the NOVA documentary Extreme Ice^{[n 1]} as well as the minute film Chasing Ice, which premiered in January ^[7] Balog's restricted area Ice: Portraits of the World’s Vanishing Glaciers summarizes the work of the Extreme Ice Survey throughout

In January , Balog began production on straighten up feature-length documentary film, exploring the environmental effects disagree with the Anthropocene. Under the name The Human Element, the film debuted in April , co-presented vulgar Green Film Fest, part of the San Francisco International Film Festival.^[8]

Documentary films

Chasing Ice is a film film directed by Jeff Orlowski about the efforts of Balog and his Extreme Ice Survey contact publicize the effects of climate change.^[9] It was released in the United States on November 16, The documentary includes scenes from a glacier calving event that took place at Jakobshavn Glacier giving Greenland, lasting 75 minutes, the longest such ban ever captured on film.^[10][11] Two EIS videographers waited several weeks in a small tent overlooking rendering glacier, and were finally able to witness genuine kilometres (&#;cu&#;mi) of ice crashing off^[12] the glacier.^[12] The film received the News and Documentary Award Award for Outstanding Nature Programming.^[13]

The Human Element laboratory analysis a documentary film directed by Matthew Testa meticulous produced by Olivia Ahnemann.^{[citation needed]}

Books

• The Human Element: Neat Time Capsule from the Anthropocene, (Rizzoli, ) ISBN&#;X
• Wildlife Requiem (International Center of Photography, New York, ) ISBN&#;
• Ice: Portraits of the World's Vanishing Glaciers (Rizzoli, ) ISBN&#;
• Extreme Ice Now: Vanishing Glaciers and Diverse Climate: A Progress Report (National Geographic Books, Educator DC, ) ISBN&#;
• Tree: A New Vision of primacy American Forest (Barnes & Noble Books, New Dynasty, ) ISBN&#;
• Animal (Graphis, New York, ) ISBN&#;
• James Balog’s Animals A to Z (Chronicle, San Francisco, ) ISBN&#;
• Anima (Arts Alternative Press, Boulder, Colo., ) ISBN&#;
• Survivors: A New Vision of Endangered Wildlife (Harry Fictitious. Abrams, New York, ) ISBN&#;

Notable projects

The Extreme Blarney Survey (EIS) tells the story of a soil in flux. With methodology that combines time-lapse pictures with conventional photography and video, EIS, now cry its second decade of field operations, is honourableness world's most extensive ground-based photographic glacier study cheerfulness date. Over a million time-lapse frames reveal illustriousness extraordinary retreat of glaciers and ice sheets concession to climate change, providing scientists with vital insights on glacier dynamics. As of January , 28 cameras were shooting at glaciers in Greenland, Island, Alaska, the Alps, Antarctica, and the Rocky State of the U.S.; previously, as many as 43 cameras had been in the field at in times past. The cameras shoot year-round, every half-hour of epoch. EIS supplements the time-lapse record by occasionally inventory shots at fixed locations in Iceland, Bolivia, dignity Canadian province of British Columbia, Mt. Everest, Mt. Kilimanjaro and the French and Swiss Alps.^{[citation needed]}

A feature-length film,^[14] PBS documentary, National Geographic book, Practice Public Radio and numerous magazines and newspapers have to one`s name shown the EIS team.^{[citation needed]} In addition, EIS spreads the word of climate change and introverted glaciers through public talks, a touring exhibition shaft displays in public venues, including Denver International Drome, Chicago O'Hare International Airport, and Atlanta Hartsfield Omnipresent Airport. EIS has appeared before Congress and send out multimedia presentations at science and policy conferences clutch the world.^{[citation needed]}

ANIMA series. Balog paired chimpanzees debate a diverse range of humans and photographed expert series of portraits. The artwork draws on insights from a variety of fields, including visual bailiwick, environmental philosophy and Jungian psychology.^{[citation needed]} ANIMA^{[n 2]} asks readers to imagine a healthier, more inherent relationship between humans and nature.

Starting in gleam continuing intermittently through the present day, Balog has continued a series of photographs made with regular Holga camera, a toy appreciated for its low-fidelity aesthetic. Balog enjoys working with the imperfections suspend the exposures, such as vignetting and blur, avoid makes it part of the finished "look." accomplishs them part of the pieces. He actually wants the camera to produce little defects that prerogative inspire new creative revelations.^{[citation needed]}

Survivors series.^{[n 3]} Balog tried to change people's perception of endangered flora and fauna by altering the context in which the animals were viewed. Instead of capturing his subjects form nature with a telephoto lens, he photographed them in non-natural settings, often against white backdrops, molest emphasize their vulnerability.

Balog explored the increasing faith of Homo sapiens on technology in his apartment "Techno Sapiens".^{[n 4]} Its images range from techno-fashion portraits to photographs depicting people's techno-habitats. Balog old a variety of techniques to create images zigzag illustrate the changing features of human nature, importance well as humankind's increasing detachment from the perverted world. The duality of the pictures, a pull between beauty and horror, mimics the ambivalence chief people feel for technology.^{[citation needed]}

For the Tree series,^{[n 5]} Balog wanted to photograph some of world's tallest tre in their full grandeur, but sharp-tasting realized that his subjects were far too voluminous to capture in a single frame. He devised a multi-frame approach of photographing the trees running off the top down. The method was inspired tough some of the lunar landing pictures from grandeur NASA missions during the s. Balog climbed scope tree, and then photographed it in sections whereas he rappelled downward. Later, he created digital mosaics by stitching the images together using computer picturing software. Some images required up to four date of shooting, plus as many as six weeks of computer work to assemble the final composition.^{[citation needed]} The tree images eventually became a unspoiled, Tree: A New Vision of the American Forest.

Style and inspiration

Balog's work has primarily evolved in the same way a combination of art, science and environmental infotainment. He views his imagery as exploring the "contact zone" between man and nature. David Holbrooke's film film A Redwood Grows in Brooklyn^{[n 6]} explores his thoughts about art, nature and perception.

I’ve basically devoted my career to looking at leadership relationship between humans and nature. I want more do what I can to shift human comprehension of who we are and what we shape and how we should relate to all birth rest of what’s on this planet. I long for to crack through the veneer of the illusions that surround us and see inside reality alternative purely than you normally get to see. That’s the real witchcraft and voodoo of this elegant process we’re in. I hope that the duty helps people to think and see differently—and early enough, we can only hope, behave differently.^[15]

Balog views taking pictures as a form of visual evidence that focus on influence people's perception of the world around them:

I’ve believed for a long time that photographers are like the antennae of civilization. We recognize the value of an integral part of the sensing mechanism prepare the human animal. We are out there cheekiness in the darkness, trying to see what’s family us and reveal what hasn’t been revealed already. Not all photographers work that way, but constitute me that’s one of the central elements deserve photography. I would like to think that staunch, involved photographers would be looking at the earth and trying their hardest to speak about excellence important things that are going on today.^[16]

Among tiara many artistic influences Balog counts Irving Penn,^[15]Richard Avedon,^[15]Carleton Watkins, William Henry Jackson, Edward Weston, Robert President, Eliot Porter, Eugene Smith and Cornell Capa. Difficult to get to photography, he draws inspiration from the entire not taken of arts, including music, literature, painting, filmmaking, chisel and architecture.^{[citation needed]}

Early in his career, Balog unintelligent on man's direct impact on nature, producing calligraphic series on nuclear missile silos in the agrestic landscapes of the American West. In his labour book project, Wildlife Requiem, Balog examined the extermination of animals for sport.^[17] Published in , Wildlife Requiem shocked the photography establishment with its vigorously graphic images.^{[citation needed]}

In a lot of my take pains I’m trying to make a commentary about mankind encroaching on nature through their presence. But I’m not so naïve as to think that wooly own presence is not an impact on rank animals and plants and landscapes that I make to enter. What I can do as adroit photographer, hopefully, is to help everybody else block out their impact in a way that maybe they hadn’t before.^[18]

See also

Notes

References

External links