I had always wanted to get away. In 2019 I got that chance and travelled for the whole year. I went around Europe, the US and Aotearoa New Zealand. I went to countless national parks, big tourist attractions and little places of beauty. This was, as I saw it, my chance to capture the world around me as a photographer. Capture. Particularly when my partner and I traveled the US in a van for three months, I took so many photographs of the national parks we visited. I was flirting with starting a career in travel and nature photography. In most places I'd pull out my camera and try to get the best shot I could, but there was a problem.
There were so many other people taking photographs, hiking, and hanging out. It was crowded. I found myself getting frustrated because no matter how hard I tried, especially in places like Yellowstone or the Grand Canyon, there would always be people in the photographs. These were not just people, but the aesthetically offensive tourist. The illusion of untouched natural beauty was shattered, and with it, my aesthetic aspirations. I would try to strategically angle my camera or photoshop people out.
As the trip continued, I couldn’t stop thinking about the people in front of the camera. I felt like I was witnessing a raw view of the dynamic between humans and nature in a way that upset me. The most unsettling aspect was that I somehow felt a part of it. After a while I thought, what if I kept the people in the photograph, what would that mean?
( Click on Images of bigger version and caption)
I started by trying to deconstruct my negative feelings. Why did tourists being in the frame agitate me so much? I knew it wasn’t just the aesthetic, my reaction was far too strong for that. What I felt was shame. I felt a level of contempt for the tourists taking photos, followed by a swift wave of guilt because I knew I was essentially doing the same thing. Just because I had a fancier camera, that didn't mean that I had any more right to be there than them. When other tourists were in the photographs, it somehow exposed what I was doing. It wasn’t some special moment just between me and the untouched natural world as the frame made it seem. I was like them, just taking a photograph. Taking. I had not been given anything, nor had I asked. I just took. That was what felt shameful to me. In wanting to erase other people from the narrative, I was trying to make myself and the natural world the only ones talking in the conversation. It was more special that way, more pure. In reality, I wasn’t talking with the natural world, I was just talking to it.
It is an uncomfortable truth that much of the interaction of tourists and places like the Grand Canyon operates on a decidedly ‘us and it’ relationship. ‘It’ is simply a backdrop, something to say you’ve done, something for you. What transpires is an entirely one way relationship. An experience rather than a living entity. It is separate from you, from us. When the presence of others seeing the same ‘thing’ as you shatters your experience perhaps the emotional connection was not there in the first place. We are taking joy from these places rather than allowing them to give us joy. This may seem like a pedantic difference, but flipping it like that requires an entirely different world view. If you take something, you do not owe, but if someone gives something to you, you give thanks, and do your best to return the favour. From then on I decided to include people in the photographs and to try to ask rather than just take.
The more I took photographs with the mindset of trying to create images that speak to our relationship with the earth, the more I noticed what I'd been ignoring. By erasing people from the photographs, or just showing the intrepid lone hiker, not the tourist (or throng of tourists) we discount a vital part of the narrative and interaction. By erasing that ‘shameful’ or distasteful’ element, we don’t explore it. We don’t explore how we act with and to the environment around us on an emotional level. Now that I had opened that can of worms, it was all I could think about. For most of my childhood on the small island of Jersey, my amazing and loving parents were not particularly environmentally oriented. Without the great expanses of natural land common in mainland countries, I didn't have much interaction with big natural areas until I was much older. By that time, I felt separated and honestly scared of the nature around me. I would only feel safe if there were others around. I no doubt caused an environment impact, I spectated but it did not occur to me to mindfully interact. As I got older and became more aware of humanity’s impact, I was horrified and tried to decrease any individual impact I had on the environment. Although that was more helpful, and I was more aware, it was still very much a one way street. I was trying to take less, rather than to ask or even give back. It was a mindset of mitigating my impact, rather than cultivating a one one one relationship with the world around me. That was very much where I was at the beginning of this trip
The big turning point was when, whilst in the van, my partner and I both read the book Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. It was a moment when all the dots connected. What I had been trying to explore with my photographs was given an upward trajectory. The book focuses on honouring and conducting a reciprocal relationship with the earth. Opening a dialogue, being part of something, not a spectator, not us and it, just… us. I wondered what that would that look like? For some people, it would look like taking up a camera and taking photos of the beauty around them, as an act of gratitude, not capturing but bearing witness to. For some people it would be learning native plants and trees, and planting more when possible. Mostly, as we can never hope to even slightly return the gifts that nature has given us, it’d be thank you, thank you, thank you, and passing those gifts onwards. I was enamoured with the idea, and have been ever since.
It has been more than a year since I took that trip in the US. Since then I have moved to Aotearoa, a country where the connection of people and land is more mindful than most, but still leaves a lot to be desired. This environmental apathy is an individual issue that is occurring on a worldwide level. As long as we allow big companies to put the responsibility for their actions on us, we harbour this toxic guilt that makes even thinking about the environmental factors painful and out of reach, let alone making any changes. It is important to try and reduce our waste, carbon footprint, and eat in a way that does not support environmental destruction and cruelty. Those changes take time to stick, and often motivation is hard. The one change that is rarely discussed, and takes the least ‘sacrifice’ is to cultivate a meaningful relationship with the earth. Being more mindful of what we are given and not abusing it, or let others abuse it in our name.
We can meaningfully start a connection with the nature around us when we hike, when we lie down in the grass, when we hear birdsong in the morning. If we as individuals are more connected, it means when habitat is burnt down, when big companies try and override that relationship we feel it deeply and are more inclined to fight against it. Rather than deciding to take less from the environment, our mindset would be flipped into a realisation of how much we are gifted. That would encourage us to honour that relationship, making sure we do not take too much. A relationship based on guilt becomes one based on gratitude. It is transformative. Rather than coming from a place of losing things, giving things up, our actions would come from a place of gratitude and active giving. It would be growth
Our impact as humans is undeniably exploitative, it is usually taking instead of asking, proclaiming ownership of what should not and can not be owned. It is a one way street that is unbalanced and destructive, not only to the earth but to us. By keeping the tourists in the photos, my hope is that we can first acknowledge that truth and document this insidious relationship (or lack thereof) playing out, and come to terms with our own relationship with the natural world. These photographs show not just the big wildfires, the big standoff moments between a car and a bison, but also the more quiet moments of disconnect and taking. I hope to continue this work and document what a meaningful connection between nature and ourselves could look like. It starts with me, mindfully tending to my garden and saying hello to the trees. What now made me not just another tourist was that I was asking, rather than taking. The best part was that for all that I could know and hope, the people in the photographs could be asking too.
Resources
Braiding Sweetgrass - Robin Wall Kimmerer
I was half way through setting up a big list of resources of environmental organisations around the world, but I realised that the most helpful thing if you are interested in becoming more active in environmental groups, is to find organisations in your own community that are doing good work that you believe in. Most of these organisations will have facebook events and websites, so if you just look, it is incredible what you will find.