For years, amid growing awareness of how finite out planet’s resources are, sustainability has become the watchword in architecture and design. Anyone with a pulse will be well aware of our ongoing climate crisis: In the past half century, global temperatures have risen an average of roughly one quarter degree Fahrenheit per decade, almost twice as fast as the previous half century. And scientists predict that in the next 20 years the global average temperature will rise by around a third of a degree Fahrenheit per decade.
As we celebrate Earth Day, it’s important to acknowledge that any built environment is inextricably linked to the health of its natural surroundings. Here, study the works of nine talented photographers who captured nature’s strength, as well as its fragility—its diversity and its depletion. Photographer Edward Burtynsky says he hopes his images raise awareness: “It’s to show the cost of growing our civilization without the necessary consideration for sustainable industrial practices.”
Seeing the images below should not only raise awareness, but also alarm to the delicateness of our only and beautiful planet.
Photo: Beth Moon
Baobab Tree (sub-Saharan Africa)
Nicknamed The Tree of Life, the sacred baobab can live more than 2,000 years. Its massive trunk stores enough water for it to thrive—and even bear fruit—in sub-Saharan Africa’s desolate dry season. “It is hard not to fall under the spell of these wildly eccentric, gigantic trees,” photographer Beth Moon, who has been photographing baobabs since 2006, said in an interview. But many of the largest specimens have been collapsing under their own weight, felled by dehydration brought on by drought and higher temperatures.
In her oversize black-and-white photo book, Baobab (Abbeville Press, November 2021), Moon pays tribute to these endangered succulents, with dozens of breathtaking duotone portraits of some of the oldest baobab trees in Madagascar, Botswana, South Africa, and Senegal.
HALLDOR KOLBEINS/Getty Images
Fagradalsfjall (near Reykjavík, Iceland)
On March 19, 2021, Fagradalsfjall, a dormant volcano about 30 miles outside Reykjavík, Iceland, began erupting for the first time in almost 6,000 years. A few days later, Halldor Kolbeins was in a single-engine plane, documenting the twin streams of lava oozing from the mountain. Kolbeins has been working as a photographer in Iceland for over two decades, capturing the nation’s otherworldly landscapes for National Geographic, among others. “My admiration for nature came as a natural thing since I grew up in northern and west Iceland, where the sunsets are intense and the northern lights are totally unspoiled by city lights,” Kolbeins explained.
Photo: Martin Broen
Sinkhole (Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico)
This series by Argentinian photographer Martin Broen may look like it was shot on an alien landscape. But the eerie images were actually taken inside a cenote, or natural sinkhole, in Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula—part of the largest system of underground caves on earth.
“Being a technical diver and underwater photographer gives me access to discover magical underwater worlds which are not easily accessible,” Broen, an industrial designer who designed some of his own custom equipment, said in a statement. This image, Flooded Cave, won Photo of the Year at the 2022 Landscape Photographer of the Year Contest.
Photo: David Neilson
Patagonia, Antarctica
Australian landscape photographer David Neilson’s Chasing the Mountain Light (Abbeville Press, October 2022) combines a fascinating memoir with stunning black-and-white photographs that embody his lifelong passion for photography, climbing, and preserving untamed spaces like Patagonia and the Australian Alps. “I’m interested in where other people’s love for wild places comes from,” Neilson told the Sierra Club.
Upstate New York
Carolyn Marks Blackwood has been photographing the stretch of the Hudson River near her upstate New York home for over two decades, dutifully capturing the changing waters—which freeze up and shatter like glass in winter.
Water, Water, Everywhere, a collection of Marks Blackwood’s photos of the Hudson, both frigid and flowing, went on view at LA’s Von Lintel Gallery in December 2022. The name of the show, taken from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner, is a nod to the growing climate crisis, Marks Blackwood said a statement: “Especially this last summer [2022], severe droughts and extreme heat hit many locations around the world while others experienced extreme storms and rainfall, which caused catastrophic flooding and mudslides.” Water is essential for life,” she added, “[but] it can be a hugely destructive force.”
Photo: Jassen Todorov
Victorville Airport (near Apple Valley, California)
Many of Jassen Todorov’s most acclaimed images, like this photo— which won grand prize in the 2018 National Geographic Photo Contest—were taken from the cockpit of his 1978 Piper Warrior. The view is of thousands of Volkswagens and Audis parked at Victorville Airport near Apple Valley, California. The airport, tucked in the southwestern edge of the Mojave Desert, is a boneyard for decommissioned airplanes destined to be sold for parts or scrap. But when Volkswagen had to issue a massive recall in 2015, the airport also became one of 37 depots housing thousands of rusting VWs. “These cars are just sitting out there and collecting dust,” Todorov told Nat Geo. “By capturing scenes like this one, I hope we will all become more conscious and more caring for our beautiful planet.”
MARTIN VALIGURSKY
To Sua Ocean Trench (Upolu Island, Samoa)
The Pacific Islands are on the front lines of climate change. Based in Brisbane, photographer Martin Valigursky has captured the region’s remaining unspoiled beauty, including To Sua Ocean Trench on Samoa’s Upolu island. At this swimming hole, a lush landscape of plant-covered volcanic basalt suddenly gives way to a saltwater tidepool that’s nearly 100 feet deep. Daredevils will want to take a flying leap into the crystal clear waters. Everyone else uses the steep but sturdy wooden ladder.
Photo: Armin Dett
Moth (Masoala National Park, Madagascar)
After photographing the moths of Costa Rica, German photographer Armin Dett turned his lens halfway around the world—to Madagascar, where millennia of isolation off the coast of southern Africa has enabled a panoply of unique flora and fauna to evolve.
That includes the amazing array of butterflies and moths in Masoala National Park, the largest of the island’s protected areas. Dett has selected hundreds of images of these colorful lepidoptera for his upcoming photo book Magic Eyes of Masoala (Benteli Publishing, November 2023). All specimens were photographed alive and then released, providing a beautiful—and essential—record of their diversity as habitat destruction and climate change threaten their home.
Photo: Edward Burtynsky, courtesy Robert Koch Gallery, San Francisco/Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto
Salt Ponds (near Naglou Sam Sam, Senegal)
Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky’s latest collection captures aerial views from across sub-Saharan Africa. Starkly surreal images emerge out of the the tracks of human industry, from salt flats in Botswana to iron mines in South Africa. African Studies (Steidl, April 2023) reflects on how rapidly ancient landscapes are altered and natural resources depleted.
Homo sapiens migrated out of Africa some 200,000 years ago as a result of a climate shift causing extreme droughts. In the 21st century, Burtynsky said in a statement, we’ve returned “to one of the last places on Earth to be swept into the unrelenting machinations of the human industrial complex. The African continent, boasting a tremendous wealth of unexploited resources, is a fragile, final frontier, resting squarely in the crosshairs of progress.”
Photo: Beth Moon
Photo: Beth Moon
HALLDOR KOLBEINS/Getty Images
HALLDOR KOLBEINS/Getty Images
Photo: Martin Broen
Photo: Martin Broen
Photo: David Neilson
Photo: David Neilson
Photo: Jassen Todorov
Photo: Jassen Todorov
MARTIN VALIGURSKY
MARTIN VALIGURSKY
Photo: Armin Dett
Photo: Armin Dett
Photo: Edward Burtynsky, courtesy Robert Koch Gallery, San Francisco/Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto
Photo: Edward Burtynsky, courtesy Robert Koch Gallery, San Francisco/Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto