Lawrence Hislop's Vulnerability makes climate horrors heavenly

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      Lawrence Hislop: Vulnerability

      At Winsor Gallery until January 3

      Artists have an uncanny ability to convert the ugly works of man into images of great beauty. Witness Edward Burtynsky’s stunning photographs of open-pit mines, ship-breaking yards, and toxic tailings ponds. Or Chris Jordan’s compelling photo-compilations of vast fields of discarded cellphones, pop bottles, and shopping bags. And now, Lions Bay–based artist Lawrence Hislop has produced a body of seriously gorgeous black-and-white photographs that document the impact of climate change and rising sea levels on four diverse communities.

      Hislop’s photographs, accompanied by short videos he shot and narrated, chronicle life in three Arctic regions—Shishmaref, Alaska; Uummannaq, Greenland; and Lapland, Norway—and in the Republic of Seychelles in the Indian Ocean. The artist visited these locations while working with a United Nations project, Portraits of Resilience. As he writes in his statement, he taught high-school students in these far-flung places how to use digital cameras to document the impact of climate change on their lives. (Their photos were exhibited in Copenhagen during the recent summit on climate change.)

      During his travels, Hislop also shot his own series of black-and-white landscape and seascape photos, which he has titled “Vulnerability”. Using a large-format camera, he has captured the silvery roll of ocean waves over a half-buried seawall, a stand of palm trees, and the collapsed foundation of a wooden house. He has also caught an extraordinary degree of detail: the texture of the granite in eroded cliffs in the Seychelles, the intricacies of the lichen on the rocky shores of a Lapland pond, the weathered boards and exposed nails of a house undone by the sea in Shishmaref.

      Short wall texts alert us to what is happening in each area that Hislop visited. His words enable us to read disaster into these otherwise beautiful images. And his words also provoke questions about the role of the artist at this desperate time in the history of the world.

      Does the artist merely record what she or he sees, or does the artist advocate change? And how effective are the arts in altering public attitudes and behaviours? Historically, we can cite the American landscape painters and photographers of the late-19th and early-20th centuries who helped warn the public about the need to preserve great tracts of wilderness as national parks. That these historic artists were working in the tradition of the romantic sublime is interesting here. It is that photographic tradition, as seen in the work of Ansel Adams and his colleague Morley Baer, that Hislop studied.

      In terms of popular and political effect, well, the areas and lives he has documented are far from the centres of power, pollution, and overconsumption. Hislop is alerting us to huge impacts, yes, but on small populations of marginalized people.

      Perhaps it’s only when the oceans are carrying off great chunks of Manhattan, Hong Kong, and Bombay that world leaders will finally wake up to the devastating consequences of global warming. But by then, of course, it will be too late. Perhaps it is already too late. Happy holidays.

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