Ecotopia: The Second ICP Triennial of Photography and Video

by Brian Wallis, Edward Earle (Editor), Christopher Phillips (Editor)

When the International Center of Photography launched Strangers, its first Triennial, in 2003, its curators wrote that their goal was "to demonstrate photography's incomparable richness as a visual medium--in the form of still photographs, video, sculptural objects, and installation pieces. The result is a dynamic coherence that results as much from a dialogue between individual works as from curatorial intention." This second time out, in a period of rampant natural disasters and concerns about global environmental change, they have shifted their attention from strangers, from our relationships with one another, to home, to our relationships with the earth. Ecotopia, brings readers the natural world through the eyes and lenses of some of the most interesting and engaging photographers working today. These 30 international artists shatter stereotypes of landscape and nature imagery to examine new concepts of the natural sphere occasioned by twenty-first-century technologies. They capture our destructive engagement with the environment and develop visions of our future, both better and worse. Ecotopia considers nature in the broadest sense, and offers new perspectives on the planet that sustains, enchants and, increasingly, frightens.

380 pages, Paperback

First published October 15, 2006

Reviews

[Cheryl]

This 'catalog' is photography and commentary pointed at the bad stuff humans are doing to the environment (and, by extension, ourselves). Unfortunately it is not about ecotopia in the optimistic sub-genre SF sense.

I did look at every picture, even the disturbing ones, and read much of the commentary for each artist. I did not read the round-table conversation in the beginning. I would not go to see the exhibition live, were it to tour again near me.

June 2023