Life on earth isn’t what it used to be back in the green days before coal and the steam engine, before so many of us covered the planet and used it as our own personal Quickie-Mart. Ecotopia: The Second ICP Triennial of Photography and Video is what Roberta Smith of the New York Times said “might be described as An Inconvenient Truth in exhibition form.” There’s truth in the statement, but the number of images displayed by nearly 40 photojournalists and artists range to themes beyond climate control to include our conflicting feelings about nature, the effects of war on landscape, community and memory, and mans blatant disregard for beings of any kind when there’s money to be made.
Entering Ecotopia, the sounds of nature—the squeaking, buzzing, the rustling of reeds—is the first thing one hears. These sounds were created by Catherine Chalmer to accompany her totally engaging, fantastically beautiful seven-minute video “Safari,” which features insects, amphibians and reptiles as its stars, romping through a lush and verdant set, a wee Eden in Chalmer’s Soho studio. The reconstruction is a good one, and it’s something we must do with increasing frequency, having rid ourselves of nature and its nuisances. Chalmer’s close up focus on this tiny, unseen and often brushed aside world sits opposite Mitch Epstein’s large-scale color photograph “Biloxi, Mississippi,” where the wreckage of another brushed off population hangs limply from tree branches like the soft clock in Salvador Dali’s “The Persistence of Memory.”
The images in Ecotopia don’t equivocate, and many of the works are openly critical of a government that has no sense of consequence, and this extremely well-curated and elegantly presented show is also extremely democratic. The theme of nature as the threatening force that leaves man suddenly stranded is illustrated by the masters of photography as well amateur photographers whose snap-shots of the devastating tsunami of 2004 are shown in a slideshow along with intrepid photojournalists like New York Times photographer Vincent LaForet (whose pictures post-Hurricane Katrina were widely circulated). Among LaForet’s stunning views of a wasted and waterlogged New Orleans is the aerial shot of the city with the sun half-veiled by black smoke, which has disturbing echoes of the Civil War era painting by Frederick Edwin Church, “Cotopaxi” (1862).
This 19th century reference is no reach since artists of that time were also keen to capture nature’s beauty before the man-made world made a hash of it. Could they ever imagine how bad it would get? Another theme in Ecotopia, that of “nature threatened,” greets visitors on the first wall with selections from Robert Adams’ series Turning Back. The degree to which artists of the 20th/21st century understand the threats to nature, and the apt and expressive use of photography to document it, is evident when one compares the ravaged tree carcasses and scarred hillsides that were once the ancient forests of the Pacific Northwest to perky tree stumps in George Inness’ painting “The Lackawana River Valley” (1855). Robert Adams’ B&W images are a rebuke so devastating and cold that one is almost cheered at the sight of Chris LeMarca’s color portraits of Oregon’s “Forest Defenders.” Sit in this dark room and watch two cycles of the slide carousel (I’m deliberately being antique) and enjoy the effects of manifest destiny has had on the ecosystem.
The exhibition’s solitary example of pristine landscape is Clifford Ross’ “Mountain XIII.” This enormous (71 1/2 x 130 inch) crystal-clear photograph of a mountain and its lake reflection is so placid it’d make Albert Bierstadt swoon. It also sets up an interesting counterpoint for another of the Ecotopia themes: the militarized landscape. On the next wall is Sophie Ristelhueber’s triptych “Iraq,” documenting the devastation of the Iran/Iraq war. Endless rows of palm trees stand burnt and decapitated. Another picture captures palms uprooted and lying in low piles like spent cigars in a barren ashtray landscape. “29 Palms,” a film on two screens by artist An-My Lê, shows our U.S. recruits preparing for war maneuvers in the California desert. Also timely are pictures of one-time Palestinian villages now pine-planted in “Rabin Park” by Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chararin, and the exquisitely composed, golden hued photographs of war ruins by Simon Norfolk.
The curators understand we can’t take all gloom and doom, so they provide spots of happiness. Tigers frolic in Diana Thater’s “Perfect Devotion Five”; six tortoises survey the monotony of modern architecture in Allora & Calzadilla’s video “Amphibious (Login-Logout).” Ride the “Turkey-Cam” or the “Tumbleweed-Cam” in Sam Easterson’s Animal Vegetable Video series. Meet the Dodo—that icon of extinction—resurrected by the kindness of Harri Kallio. Because, if we don’t keep a sense of humor concerning the entire situation, we might just fall apart.
Through Jan. 7. ICP, 1133 6th Ave. (at 43rd St.), 212-857-0045.
