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Slow Month for the Journal
Monday · April 27, 2009 | posted under: Website Business · Media | 2 comments
Self Portrait, Cooking Light | In the Kitchen
I have just finished shooting the first week of a five week assignment in Texas for the Department of Agriculture's National Resource Conservation Service. I'll be editing photos and preparing to spend the next four weeks in Texas shooting almost non-stop. The first five days have offered some unique photography challenges and have been a fascinating education about resource management from an agricultural point of view. Because of the nature of media and politics, we often get a distorted view of environmentalism that suggests there are only two camps in opposition over either using resources or protecting them when in fact most people who are actually working on the land are concerned both with developing resources and at the same time embracing new methods and technology that allow them to operate sustainably. It's a middle ground that is overlooked. This is a long way of saying that things will be very slow here until June. If you are interested in the minutia and little details, I'll be posting to our facebook page as time allows.
© Mark Meyer
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2 Reader Comments
I was asking myself the same question while studying the "Parco Agricolo sud Milano", an area of historically intense cultivation.
My view is that the middle ground, you depict, is the "real" force keeping the land in a living state. Instead the areas which went under "protection" have a more "how we thought it was" fictitious look.
Speaking with some farmers, however, I did not find a great consciousness about it. But that may be ascribed to the insider's view.
Posted by Mauro Thon Giudici on Tuesday, April 28, 2009
I love this post, Mark, and the clarity and ease with which you articulate the outer edges of a complicated observation. I think you are correct about the polemicized view of the environment that is often depicted - purposefully and otherwise - to promote political and economic agendas. The real challenge - and the truly interesting stuff, I think - involves figuring out to simultaneously sustain while allowing for, even encouraging or cultivating (literally), change and sometimes--yes, I'll use that dirty word--growth. Growth is, after all, a dirty and complex affair, and we should not accept as complete or satisfactory a discourse of images or words that presumes to portray it as simple, clean and tidy. So, please keep on complicating things, and keep us apprised of what you learned in Texas! (Lord, I never thought those words would escape my lips.)
Posted by Jennifer on Thursday, June 4, 2009
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