How the art of film camera can connect with the act of tackling environmental issues?

As human beings, we all solve problems by making choices every single day. And every single action we take, even the most inconsequential things, can shape our perspectives and change the entire planet.

We can accidentally see pictures illustrating human-caused environmental changes of forests, oceans, rivers and climate. Some folks have rolled their eyes no matter what might happen, some have set sail to change little things in the humble hope of making a big difference.

Environment can change. Why can’t we?

We can enjoy how brilliant our planet is. Why couldn’t next generations?

Photography shows unanswerable question

Last year, UNICEF Vietnam working with Happiness Saigon agency launched a print campaign named #NoFilter to show the detrimental impact of polluted water on people’ lives, which drew attention to the press and the general public. In this campaign, photographers using film camera captured the photos of children living along harmful rivers. Then they developed these pictures in a dark room where dirty water is used to go through several processing steps. Then, they gained some final portraits as below:

If the impure water brings poison to seemingly pure pictures, we can definitely imagine how it does to the well-being of children in the reality.

However, in another situation, photographers who use double exposure technique also possibly take similar photos developed by clean water.

These bleak pictures which are evaluated equally compared to those from contaminated water of #Nofilter campaign lead to an unanswered question that how we can distinguish the boundaries between good and bad, while we cannot know how eventual consequences would be?

After all, the matter here is that a large number of individuals doing even inconsequential things can probably make big changes, for example:

Some plastic bottles dumped into the ocean seems to be innocuous, but a large amount of plastic waste drive environment to get substantially worse. A number of countries deal with millions of tons of garbage on the ocean, killing gradually marine animals and poisoning our health by plastic-related toxins in the seafood we consume.

Cutting down some trees doesn’t matter, but the over-exploitation of forest resources to make way for human development has become problematic in the long run. The World Wildlife Fund estimated that our Earth is losing over 18 million acres of forests every year, putting an end to safe shelters of animals and leading to further global warming.

Besides raging storms, there are also shooting stars with rays of hope

Going back to film photography, many photographers are particularly keen on yielding double-exposure pictures which can unpredictably catch them by surprise. This method spikes up their sense of creativity and curiosity to expose two images on the same frame depending on their aesthetic vision.

Apart from unsuccessful photos shown above, there are still some successful double-exposure photos developed by clean water.

The art of combination gives us the way to embrace the harmony of nature and human beings or memorable moments in life. In other words, that photographers can place multiple shots together to draw new perspectives on final pictures means that we possibly join hands to preserve our planet and empower future generations to enjoy the beauty of our universe.

To be positive, pressing environmental issues urge a number of dynamic approaches to conservation to become increasingly innovative and useful. Surfing the Internet every day, we can come across various examples of existing projects that many organizations and individuals are taking action the best they can to protect the Earth. 4ocean has called for community to purchase the 4ocean Bracelets with each bracelet paying for one pound of trash removed from the ocean and coastlines, which has demolished over 2,2 million pounds of trash till now. In the meantime, groups of scientists have worked on an enzyme which can digest types of commonly harmful plastics, helping us to come closer to a tremendously potential protection solution more than ever.

The power of collaboration might make problems be no longer the case. And we need not only work with others in present generations but also be concerned about future generations. Looking after the well being of nature is not the job of one person, but the responsibility of all of us. We often wonder a simple question that “How to change current circumstances?”, but we probably answer it: embark on changing our simple actions together right now, care for our lives and care for people coming after us.