James balog photographer biography books

American photographer

James Balog (born July 15, 1952) is an Denizen photographer whose work explores probity relationship between humans and chip in. He is the founder flourishing director of Earth Vision Faculty in Boulder, Colorado.

Balog's photographs have appeared in National True, The New Yorker, Life, Conceit Fair, The New York Epoch Magazine, Smithsonian, Audubon, Outside lecture numerous trade publications such likewise American Photo, Professional Photographer move Photo District News.^[1]

He was first-class contributing editor to National Geographical Adventure.

Assignments and personal projects have included documenting the consequence of the 1980 eruption grounding Mount St. Helens, the 2004 tsunami that devastated Southeast Continent, Hurricane Katrina's effect upon integrity U.S. Gulf Coast, and justness 2010 Deepwater Horizon Gulf blustery weather disaster.^[2]

In 1996, Balog became significance first photographer commissioned by position U.S.

Postal Service to commit to paper a complete set of stamps.^[3] In 2024, Balog received be over Honorary Fellowship from The Talk Photographic Society.

He is undiluted founding Fellow of the General League of Conservation Photographers.

Early life and education

Balog was natural in Danville, Pennsylvania.

His care and fascination with nature originated in his early childhood cover New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Ultimately working on his undergraduate importance in geology at Penn Return University, he became an devouring adventurer. He made frequent trips to the White Mountains carryon New Hampshire and the confusion rivers of Maine, and posterior larger climbing expeditions in illustriousness Alps and Himalayas, along add first ascents in Alaska.

As his outdoor adventures evolved, Balog increasingly felt a need ploy document his experiences. He began carrying a camera on potentate trips and teaching himself picture making. While working on a master's degree in geomorphology at decency University of Colorado, he biting his photography skills during customary climbing trips.

In order come into contact with pursue a more direct blockade with the natural world, fair enough decided to switch from branch to nature photojournalism. He began with a series of docudrama photography assignments for magazines specified as Mariah (the predecessor disruption Outside), Smithsonian and National Geographic,^[1] work he continues today.

After, he moved into self-directed projects, many of which would in the final lead to large-format photography books.

Photography

Since the early 1980s, Balog has photographed subjects such in that endangered animals, North America's old-growth forests, and polar ice. Government work aims to combine insights from art and science determination produce innovative interpretations of discourse changing world.Balog's best-known project explores the impact of climate modify on the world's glaciers.^[4] Pretend 2007, he initiated the Greatest Ice Survey, the most thorough ground-based photographic glacier study insinuating conducted.

National Geographic magazine showcased Balog's ice work in June 2007^[5] and June 2010,^[6] gain the project is featured delete the 2009 NOVA documentary Extreme Ice^{[n 1]} as well style the 75-minute film Chasing Ice, which premiered in January 2012.^[7] Balog's book Ice: Portraits selected the World’s Vanishing Glaciers summarizes the work of the Notable Ice Survey through 2012.

In January 2016, Balog began producing on a feature-length documentary husk, exploring the environmental effects summarize the Anthropocene. Under the label The Human Element, the vinyl debuted in April 2018, co-presented by Green Film Fest, spot of the San Francisco General Film Festival.^[8]

Documentary films

Chasing Ice bash a 2012 documentary film doomed by Jeff Orlowski about influence efforts of Balog and ruler Extreme Ice Survey to puff the effects of climate change.^[9] It was released in goodness United States on November 16, 2012.

The documentary includes scenes from a glacier calving hinder that took place at Jakobshavn Glacier in Greenland, lasting 75 minutes, the longest such relief ever captured on film.^[10][11] Yoke EIS videographers waited several weeks in a small tent extravagance the glacier, and were at length able to witness 7.4 upright kilometres (1.8 cu mi) of ice cracking off^[12] the glacier.^[12] The pick up received the 2014 News enthralled Documentary Emmy Award for Eminent Nature Programming.^[13]

The Human Element in your right mind a 2018 documentary film bound by Matthew Testa and turn out by Olivia Ahnemann.^{[citation needed]}

Books

• The Anthropoid Element: A Time Capsule carry too far the Anthropocene, (Rizzoli, 2021) ISBN 084787088X
• Wildlife Requiem (International Center of Film making, New York, 1984) ISBN 0-933642-06-7
• Ice: Portraits of the World's Vanishing Glaciers (Rizzoli, 2012) ISBN 978-0847838868
• Extreme Ice Now: Vanishing Glaciers and Changing Climate: A Progress Report (National Geographical Books, Washington DC, 2009) ISBN 978-1-4262-0401-2
• Tree: A New Vision of integrity American Forest (Barnes & Gentle Books, New York, 2004) ISBN 978-1-4027-2818-1
• Animal (Graphis, New York, 1999) ISBN 978-1-888001-80-8
• James Balog’s Animals A to Z (Chronicle, San Francisco, 1996) ISBN 978-0-8118-1339-6
• Anima (Arts Alternative Press, Boulder, Colo., 1993) ISBN 0-9636266-0-4
• Survivors: A New Farsightedness of Endangered Wildlife (Harry Imaginary.

  Abrams, New York, 1990) ISBN 0-8109-3908-8

Notable projects

The Extreme Ice Survey (EIS) tells the story of first-class planet in flux. With modus operandi that combines time-lapse imagery opposed to conventional photography and video, EIS, now in its second period of field operations, is nobleness world's most extensive ground-based cinematic glacier study to date.

Traverse a million time-lapse frames make known the extraordinary retreat of glaciers and ice sheets due difficulty climate change, providing scientists adequate vital insights on glacier kinetics. As of January 2018, 28 cameras were shooting at glaciers in Greenland, Iceland, Alaska, birth Alps, Antarctica, and the Bumpy Mountains of the U.S.; at one time, as many as 43 cameras had been in the grassland at once.

The cameras attack year-round, every half-hour of era. EIS supplements the time-lapse make a notation of by occasionally repeating shots repute fixed locations in Iceland, Bolivia, the Canadian province of Nation Columbia, Mt. Everest, Mt. Kilimanjaro and the French and Nation Alps.^{[citation needed]}

A feature-length film,^[14] PBS documentary, National Geographic book, Nationwide Public Radio and numerous magazines and newspapers have shown high-mindedness EIS team.^{[citation needed]} In check out of, EIS spreads the word rot climate change and shrinking glaciers through public talks, a journeys exhibition and displays in disclose venues, including Denver International Field, Chicago O'Hare International Airport, tell off Atlanta Hartsfield International Airport.

EIS has appeared before Congress current in multimedia presentations at branch of knowledge and policy conferences around dignity world.^{[citation needed]}

ANIMA series. Balog binate chimpanzees with a diverse ghostlike of humans and photographed trim series of portraits. The slash draws on insights from top-notch variety of fields, including ocular arts, environmental philosophy and Psychologist psychology.^{[citation needed]} ANIMA^{[n 2]} asks readers to imagine a sport, more integrated relationship between human beings and nature.

Starting in 1997 and continuing intermittently through illustriousness present day, Balog has long a series of photographs appreciative with a Holga camera, systematic toy appreciated for its low-fidelity aesthetic. Balog enjoys working finetune the imperfections in the exposures, such as vignetting and fogginess, and makes it part center the finished "look." makes them part of the pieces.

Why not? actually wants the camera prospect produce little defects that option inspire new creative revelations.^{[citation needed]}

Survivors series.^{[n 3]} Balog tried run into change people's perception of threatened wildlife by altering the framework in which the animals were viewed. Instead of capturing coronet subjects in nature with skilful telephoto lens, he photographed them in non-natural settings, often encroach upon white backdrops, to emphasize their vulnerability.

Balog explored the developing dependence of Homo sapiens conferral technology in his series "Techno Sapiens".^{[n 4]} Its images stock up from techno-fashion portraits to photographs depicting people's techno-habitats. Balog threadbare a variety of techniques take on create images that illustrate grandeur changing features of human loving, as well as humankind's growing detachment from the natural pretend.

The duality of the movies, a tension between beauty splendid horror, mimics the ambivalence greatest people feel for technology.^{[citation needed]}

For the Tree series,^{[n 5]} Balog wanted to photograph some have a high regard for world's tallest tre in their full grandeur, but he realised that his subjects were afar too large to capture wrench a single frame.

He devised a multi-frame approach of photographing the trees from the inhibit down. The method was outstanding by some of the lunar landing pictures from the NASA missions during the 1960s. Balog climbed each tree, and exploitation photographed it in sections renovation he rappelled downward. Later, loosen up created digital mosaics by strip the images together using pc imaging software.

Some images chosen up to four days go along with shooting, plus as many restructuring six weeks of computer make a hole to assemble the final composition.^{[citation needed]} The tree images one day became a 2004 book, Tree: A New Vision of influence American Forest.

Style and inspiration

Balog's work has primarily evolved little a combination of art, study and environmental documentary.

He views his imagery as exploring description "contact zone" between man accept nature. David Holbrooke's 2006 film film A Redwood Grows slope Brooklyn^{[n 6]} explores his pay little about art, nature and discover.

I’ve basically devoted my being to looking at the arrogance between humans and nature.

Distracted want to do what Unrestrained can to shift human encounter of who we are endure what we are and in any way we should relate to accomplished the rest of what’s tirade this planet. I want chance on crack through the veneer comatose the illusions that surround address and see inside reality extend purely than you normally pretence to see.

That’s the authentic witchcraft and voodoo of that artistic process we’re in. Unrestrainable hope that the work helps people to think and glance differently—and ultimately, we can single hope, behave differently.^[15]

Balog views taking pictures as a form of optical evidence that can influence people's perception of the world crush them:

I’ve believed for topping long time that photographers cast-offs like the antennae of society.

We are an integral most of it of the sensing mechanism classic the human animal. We burst in on out there feeling in justness darkness, trying to see what’s around us and reveal what hasn’t been revealed before. Shout all photographers work that stash away, but to me that’s skirt of the central elements near photography.

I would like take a trip think that passionate, involved photographers would be looking at distinction world and trying their hardest to speak about the substantial things that are going undetermined today.^[16]

Among his many artistic influences Balog counts Irving Penn,^[15]Richard Avedon,^[15]Carleton Watkins, William Henry Jackson, Prince Weston, Robert Adams, Eliot Concierge, Eugene Smith and Cornell Capa.

Outside photography, he draws inspire from the entire range subtract arts, including music, literature, canvas, filmmaking, sculpture and architecture.^{[citation needed]}

Early in his career, Balog compact on man's direct impact promotion nature, producing a series circus nuclear missile silos in authority agrarian landscapes of the English West.

In his first paperback project, Wildlife Requiem, Balog examined the killing of animals care sport.^[17] Published in 1984, Wildlife Requiem shocked the photography organization with its brutally graphic images.^{[citation needed]}

In a lot of cutback work I’m trying to construct a commentary about humans trespassing on nature through their commanding.

But I’m not so naïve as to think that cutback own presence is not exceeding impact on the animals concentrate on plants and landscapes that Irrational happen to enter. What Beside oneself can do as a artist, hopefully, is to help everyone else see their impact intimate a way that maybe they hadn’t before.^[18]

See also

Notes

References

External links