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The myth of the limitless nature

documerica
Regissør: Pierre-Francois Didek
(Belgia og Frankrike)

ENVIRONMENT / Fifty years after they photographed the US consumer landscape in the Documerica project, a documentary film looks back on this work and today reflects both the environmental crises and unfulfilled promises from that time.




(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)

We live in the age of extinction. The average size of the world's wild animal population has decreased by 73 percent in 50 years. Nature is disappearing at a rapid pace, but sometimes we have to see it to believe it. Witnessing the direness of the situation is a political act.

The decline in natural habitats over the past 50 years has been alarmingly much faster in Europe than in the USA.

Surprisingly, the decline in natural habitats over the past 50 years has been alarmingly much faster in Europe than in the USA. This year's WWF report concludes that "EU consumption continues to be a significant driving force behind the loss of global biodiversity". But in the 1970s the situation was reversed. At that time, North America was the world's most consuming region, which was associated with progress and overconsumption and also brought with it environmental destruction.

Documerica, Self-Portrait of a Nation on the Brink by Pierre-François Didek gives us a unique insight into the state of the environment in the USA at the beginning of the 1970s. The film also reveals how environmental protection policy came about, and how people try to protect the environment to this day. It was in the 1960s that the public became aware of the ecological disasters facing the United States.

The Cuyahoga River caught fire because of all the petroleum products that were dumped there. The images of a river in flames immediately indicated the state of affairs. And the oil spill in Santa Barbara in California caused waves in the society of the rich, because this was the beach where they usually vacationed. Thousands of seabirds soaked in oil became a disturbing image that was often shown in the news.

The Documerica Project

There seemed to be no technical solution to reverse the ecological disaster, and American policymakers felt the pressure. Surprisingly, compared to today's standards, politicians agreed that immediate action was needed to preserve humanity's livelihood. President Richard Nixon appealed to Congress: "Shall we surrender to the environment or make peace with nature and begin to make amends for the damage we have done to our air, land and water?"

The average size of the world's wild animal populations has decreased by 73 percent in 50 years.

With support from both political parties, Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). He initiated several environmental laws, which are the only effective protection measures the United States has today. The EPA decided to create a compilation of documentation showing the environmental devastation, and they called the project Documerica. Just as the Farm Security Administration had photographed the poverty, despair and environmental disaster of the Great Depression of the 1930s, Documerica would capture a nation on the brink of environmental disaster in the 1970s.

But while the images from the Great Depression became legendary, the Documerica project was archived and seemingly forgotten for over 50 years, until Pierre-François Didek opened their archives when he made this film. The photographs are astonishing and show the serious ecological situation and the social aspects of the environmental destruction. The collected images shattered the myth of the limitless nature. There was no nature left where humans had not already intervened.

The mission was to document major transformations in the landscape and depict the conditions for people as a result of environmental problems. The photographers knew they had to combine personal photography with the pollution to give the audience a theme they could relate to. In this way, the project became a social study that captured the landscape's political and social conditions. In a photo series, for example, poor children swim in water with industrial waste, which has strong environmental pollution and garbage in its immediate background. It became clear that those who suffer most from the pollution problems also live in poverty. documerica portrays overconsumption at its worst. The idea of ​​buying one's luck was visible in everything, even in the rubbish that was left behind.

Those who suffer most from the pollution problems also live in poverty.

The Documerica project came to an abrupt end with the oil crisis of 1973. The US economy entered a recession, and funding stopped. The photographs that have survived show that the project never got the exposure it deserved. Some believe that Washington wanted to avoid showing these images to the public. Others believe that there was a lack of a good picture editor from the beginning, and that the project lacked direction. A personal story would be necessary for the pictures to make full sense when published in a magazine.

An expert ponders that the climate crises we are facing today could perhaps have been prevented if the photo project had been better marketed at the time. Nevertheless, these photographs reached out to the decision-makers and helped to influence them to take action. Therefore, there was collective agreement among the politicians that environmental laws had to be passed. It is probably also the reason why the USA does better than other countries when it comes to protecting its natural habitats, but still it is not enough.

Astounding incompetence

Now that we are approaching the "irreversible tipping point", perhaps we in Europe should create a similar photo project to document the depletion of natural habitats in our own backyard. Trees are cut down everywhere, and fields are transformed into huge warehouses. We are depleting our natural habitat bit by bit every single day. Monitoring the condition is always the first step in a healing process. This is the time to act, see and recognize that saving the planet is not about fighting for abstract numbers. The point is to restore nature right where we live. If we cannot reverse our race toward self-destruction, at least we will have documentation of our damage for future generations to study—in amazement at our incompetence.

 

The film was shown at the festival Ji.hlava IDFF in November. Translated by editor.



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Margareta Hruza
Margareta Hruza
Hruza is a Czech / Norwegian filmmaker and regular critic of Ny Tid.

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