DAVID ELLINGSEN PHOTOGRAPHY

I’m very pleased to have work at Luz Gallery’s final show of 2011. The first public showing of 2 photographs from the Sea/Life series will be included (along with two of my favorite artists Joni Sternbach and Susan Burnstine, fine art/documentary photographer Quinton Gordon and five others) and the show opens this coming Saturday, November 19th from 12-4pm. If you’re in Victoria on December 1st you can also join in with the Oak Bay Gallery Walk from 5-8pm and drop by the gallery then.

Stellar fashion stylist Luisa Rino called up to see about shooting a spread for Real Weddings Magazine for the Fall issue…who can say no.

At the newsstand now.

After a juried selection process earlier this year you can now see four works from the Hibernus series at the Art Rental + Sales showroom in the Vancouver Art Gallery.
Connect up with them on Facebook too.

The results are in…and I’m happy to announce I have received 4 “Honorable Mentions”.
The main Honorable Mention page is here (scroll around for some amazing work) and individual galleries for each work are linked below.

PROGRESS RESTS
Advertising Automotive

SEA/LIFE (then entered with a working title of Wild)
Fine Art Still Life
Fine Art Other

ELITE ATHLETES
People Portraits

The International Photography Awards is a sister-effort of the Lucie Foundation, where the top three winners are announced at the annual Lucie Awards ceremony. The awards event will be held at the Lincoln Center in New York on October 24, 2011, before returning to Los Angeles in 2012 in celebration of the 10-year anniversary. Over 8,000 submissions from 90 countries were received for the 2011 International Photography Awards with over 70 jurors, the largest to date. The Foundation’s mission is to honor master photographers, discover new and emerging talent, and promote the appreciation of photography. IPA is dedicated to recognizing contemporary photographers’ accomplishments in this specialized and highly visible competition. Visit www.photoawards.com for more details.

I’m very pleased to announce that the SEA/LIFE series has been moved forward into the final round of judging for this year’s Critical Mass award, part of the always wonderful Photolucida world.

“Critical Mass is a program about exposure and community. The idea is simple—photographers (from anywhere) submit a 10 image portfolio. This work is then pre-screened by a committee of approximately 20 great jurors. From those votes, the 200 top Finalists are determined. These 200 Finalists and their work go on to a jury of approximately 200 of the world’s best curators, editors, and other professionals who have agreed to view and vote on the Finalists’ work. Using these votes, at least one photographer is chosen to receive a book award and once the monograph is published, everyone who enters and juries will receive a copy of the book(s).”
- excerpt from the Photolucida website.

I am pleased to announce I will be included in an exhibition featuring works from the Rick Erickson collection, curated by Michael Turner. Details are below.

On Main Presents VANCOUVER/VANCOUVER
September 8 to November 4, 2011

Gallery 1965
1965 Main Street, Vancouver, B.C.

Gallery Hours:  Wednesday to Friday 12-5pm
By Appointment: onmain@gmail.com  604.872.7713

Vancouver Part 1:  Sept. 8 to Sept. 30, 2011 – Opening Thurs. Sept. 8, 7-10pm
Vancouver Part 2:  Oct. 6 to Nov. 4, 2011 – Opening Thurs. Oct. 6, 7-10pm
Curator’s Talk:  Sat. Oct. 8, 8pm

- from the official invitation:

“This inaugural exhibition is a celebration of Vancouver art and artists featuring works from the collection of Rick Erickson curated by Michael Turner.
On Main kicks off the new Gallery 1965 with VANCOUVER/VANCOUVER. This two-part salon-style exhibition will feature the works of 66 artists collected over the last 30 years.

“What distinguishes Rick Erickson’s collecting is that while many grow to appreciate art, Rick grew up on Main Street with artists. While the more ambitious art collections often boast a focus, this collection is a reflection of his four-corner engagement with the city and its histories. In that sense it is as much a personal diary as a wide-ranging collection of objects and gestures. Of interest are artworks both from and of the city — the local conversation but also those taking place from without, and the (inter)relationship between the two” (Michael Turner, 2011).

The Artists: 12 Midnite, Vikky Alexander, Cameron Andrews, Tim Barber, Rebecca Belmore, Brian Boulton, William Burroughs, Tom Burrows, Jessica Bushey, Neil Campbell, A. Chen, Lincoln Clarkes, Dana Claxton, George Clutesi, Jim Cummins, Robert Davidson, Bev Davies, Stan Douglas, Jimmie Durham, David Ellingsen, Terry Ewasiuk, Graham Gillmore, Rodney Graham, Angela Grossman, Antonia Hirsch, Image Bank, Jane Irwin, Mary Janeway, Debbie Jow, Brian Keith, Khan Lee, Attila R. Lukacs, Ken Lum, Liz Magor, Ewan McNeil, Eric Metcalfe, Sidney Morozoff, Michael Morris, Norval Morrisseau, Helmut Newton, Toni Onley, Oraf, David Ostrem, Edward Poitras, Judy Radul, Man Ray, Charles Rea, Frederic Remington, Chick Rice, Charlie Roberts, Derek Root, Marc Rudis, Peter Schuyff, Frances Semple, Jack Shadbolt, Esther Shalev-Gerz, Steffens-Colmer Studios, Unknown, Jan Wade, Ian Wallace, Neil Wedman, Williams Brothers Photographers, Paul Wong, Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas, Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun, and Etienne Zack.”

Just received notice that SEA/LIFE is in the running in the fine art category for the People’s Choice Award at the Blurb Photography Book Now Competition. See all the amazing nominees at the link above…and vote!

SEA/LIFE
New fine art collection with accompanying essay by Rex Weyler, co-founder of Greenpeace International.

Exhibition announcements forthcoming.

See the entire collection.

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HUMANS AND THE OCEAN
A troubled relationship.

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The sea runs in our veins. Our ancestors in the great heaving seas grew circulatory systems to deliver the briny nutrient soup to hungry cells. Humans may have left the ocean, but the ocean never left us. The water still finds our hunger. We stand on shorelines and contemplate a dark mystery. We take the ocean’s bounty to feed ourselves. Now, however, in our forgetfulness, the magnificent human enterprise has changed the oceans in ways we hardly dreamed possible.

In June, 2011, the Australian Seabird Rescue Service recovered a dead sea turtle on a New South Wales beach with 317 pieces of plastic – fishing line, packing tape, lollipop sticks – in its digestive tract. A study by Scripps Institution of Oceanography found that over nine percent of sampled ocean fish had eaten plastic and were dying from blocked digestive tracts. This plastic comes from you and me, from bottles, bags, toys, and the gadgets of modern consumer life, tossed away without much thought.

If, however, we pay attention, we feel the conflict between human desire and natural bounty. We might ignore this conflict, carry on, and avoid the remorse of knowing, but deep down, we know. We might dream that humanity could devise new technological solutions and expand forever, but eventually the laws and limits of nature prevail. Nature is bountiful but not limitless; she is patient but not sentimental. A time of great reckoning approaches.

Plastic garbage is only one of the human impacts contributing to an historic decline in ocean health and marine species. Oceanographers, coral reef ecologists, toxicologists, and other marine scientists, convened by the International Programme on the State of the Oceans (IPSO) in 2011, warned that the “cumulative effect” of these impacts is causing an “extinction of marine species unprecedented in human history.”

Humanity has disrupted marine life through overfishing, acidification from carbon emissions, ocean warming, coral bleaching, toxins dumped at sea, radioactive nuclear waste, agricultural run-off, oil spills, and oxygen depleted dead zones. We have not been treating our mother well.

Scientists know the solutions: Sustainable yield fishing, restricted vessel and net size, a ban on bottom dragging, effective regulation of pollutants, a sharp reduction of plastics, recycling of agricultural fertilisers and human waste, an end to crude oil spills, and a massive reduction in human carbon emissions approaching zero by 2030. However, like global warming, the solutions clash with dreams of economic triumph and industrial expansion.

No nations appear rushing to sign onto such a program. Our political systems appear too slow, bogged down in partisan favouritism and financial corruption. Meanwhile, ocean health progressively declines as fishing communities from Canada to Africa face the end to an historic coastal way of life.

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BIGGER BOATS, LESS FISH

The rise and fall of the world’s annual fish harvest demonstrates the simple fact that nature comes with limits. In five years, between 1992 and 1997 the world’s fishing fleet capacity increased by 22 percent, but the annual catch increased by only 3 percent. Human ingenuity and technology simply outpaced nature’s fecundity. A large factory supertrawler built in the 1990s had four times the fishing power of a typical 1970 trawler, greater range, better sonar, and bigger nets. However, bigger, faster boats cannot catch fish that aren’t there.

Like every other ecosystem, the world’s oceans have a limited capacity. The human harvest has now surpassed that capacity. The annual global ocean fish harvest grew from about 20 million tonnes in 1950 until it peaked at about 90 million tons in 1998. By 2008 the annual wild catch had declined to about 80 million tons, and continues to decline.

Fish remain among the last wild species that humans harvest from the global commons. Modest coastal communities around the world have survived for centuries from the sea’s bounty. Today, the decimation of the oceans threatens those communities.

Large, industrial fishing fleets harvest fish faster than the reproduction rate. An unwanted “by-catch” of dead sea life is discarded. Turtles and marine mammals die on fish hooks. Meanwhile the impact of fishing gear, bottom dragging, and lost nets contribute to the decline of marine species.

Most North Atlantic commercial fish populations – cod, hake, haddock, flounder – have been reduced to less than ten percent of their peak numbers. In 1992, the Grand Banks cod fishery collapsed. Tens of thousands of fishermen from Iceland to Canada lost their livelihoods. Coastal communities disintegrated. Similar fisheries collapses occur in South America, Africa, Europe, and in Asia.

Large-scale industrialized vessels, about 1 percent of the world’s fishing fleet, take almost 60 percent of the fish, leaving small, coastal fishing communities with the remnants. Fisheries scientists know that the solution to overfishing requires a limit on these large industrial fleets, and a limit on net size and indiscriminate long lines, but the industrial fishing nations – primarily China, Peru, Chile, Japan, the US and the European Union – resist these solutions. The lure of quick money appears to trump long-range planning and common sense.

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ACID SEAS

While we plunder the seas for their bounty of protein, we simultaneously degrade the very waters that provide that bounty. When humans burn coal and oil, we emit CO₂ into the atmosphere, and the oceans absorb about one-third of this carbon dioxide, disrupting the ocean’s natural pH balance. Today’s oceans are about 30% more acidic than they were in 1800.

Historically, the oceans adjust to small changes in atmospheric carbon through calcium-carbonate formation that naturally balances the ocean pH level. However, the rate of human carbon emissions has outpaced the natural ocean self-regulation system. Today, ocean acidity is increasing about 100-times faster than any such change in the last 20 million years. This pace of change proves critically important.

As carbonic acid levels increase, marine animals such as tiny copepods, snails, and sea urchins must rebalance their own body pH, but the compensation can stunt growth and disrupt reproduction. Tiny animals can fail to form adequate shells. Those species unable to adapt quickly enough perish. Die offs begin low in the marine food chain, among small organisms, but eventually disrupt the larger marine ecosystem and threaten fish and marine mammals. This die off is already underway in the world’s oceans.

The species collapse now taking place in the oceans represents the greatest decline in ocean diversity since a meteorite struck Earth, 64-million years ago. This time, humanity is the source of the catastrophe.

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LIFE IS RELATIONSHIP

In North America, the public equates the Exxon Valdez oil spill with the largest ecological disaster in recent memory, but over 30 oil spills are larger than the tragedy in Prince William Sound. The 2010 British Petroleum Deepwater oil well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico spilled about 20-times more crude oil – 5 million barrels, 210 million gallons – than the Exxon Valdez spilled, changing the Gulf marine ecosystem for centuries to come.

Over the last several decade, the North Sea has endured about one significant oil spill each week from drilling rigs and wells. Meanwhile, more oil is spilled into the oceans each year from what the industry calls “normal spillage” – the operation of tankers, pipelines, and refineries – than from the large, dramatic oil spills. Regions of the ocean floor remain saturated with crude oil, killing off shellfish and burrowing or bottom-dwelling species.

The pollution, acidification, bottom-dragging fishnets, and increased ocean temperature combine to kill off coral reefs, especially small, branching varieties. Three-quarters of the word’s coral beds are in decline. The Caribbean Sea has lost about 80 percent of its coral. Marine biologists estimate that by 2050 most coral beds will be gone, with only remnants in the North Sea and Pacific. In that case, millions of marine species will go extinct.

Pollution and ocean acidification also impact algae production and other primary marine organisms. Typical of ecosystem feedback in nature, the decline of coccolithophore algae effects ocean cloud cover, thereby changing Earth’s reflective quality – or albedo – which in turn accelerates global warming. In nature, no organism or process exists in isolation. Strictly speaking, from the perspective of scientific observation, nature is not a collection of things at all, but rather a pattern of relationships.

Our relationship with the oceans has grown somewhat dysfunctional.

Our civilization, with its glorious monuments to human intellect and imagination, still struggles to find its appropriate relationship with the biosphere and the non-human creatures, with whom we share the world. A great transformation may yet bring us back toward paradise, but any such social transformation must start with a new vision of the world. History teaches us that such paradigm-shifting social revolutions are not led by politicians and elites, but by outcasts and artists.

Photographic artist David Ellingsen has chosen to embrace our conflict with nature rather than ignore it. His art accepts a nagging inconsistency between our love for nature’s gifts and the damage we inflict on those gifts. Ellingsen was raised on an island, off the west coast of Canada, on a farm, in forests, surrounded by the sea. His artistic life led him into the heart of great cities, hubs of speed, light, and culture. These images suggest a journey back to nature, a journey that ultimately awaits us all. These images, however, do not provide a taxonomist’s record of sea life, but rather appear to probe some forgotten mystery, a reciprocity of beauty and death that lurks in every living creature. In this way, Ellingsen’s art may aid us in finding our lost place in nature’s grand, dynamic dance of living patterns.

The images in this book help us reflect on our relationship with these ocean creatures. The stunning photographs provide more than typically bright, colourful images of nature. Rather, these images awaken something deeper and more disturbing within the artist and the viewer. This disturbance may serve to awaken within us a new relationship with the sea and with the natural world around us.

Rex Weyler
July 2011

Rex Weyler is a cofounder of Greenpeace International and publishes the “Deep Green” blog.

Happy to announce that I am a finalist in Photo District News Magazine’s 2011 Great Outdoors competition. The image is part of the Salish Sea series…this one of bull kelp at dawn down at Point Roberts is in the running for the Plants, Animals, Insects, and Gardens category…I’ll update again if things progress…

I attended a most energizing workshop over in Victoria at Luz Gallery this past weekend. Moving on from the dry plate tintype process of a couple of months ago, myself and 8 other participants learned about the wet plate collodion process with the accomplished photographer Joni Sternbach of NYC. I’ve been looking for a medium to replace 11 years of working with Polaroid 55PN film (my last collection with that film is almost done!) and looks like this is the one. The way film is going it’s a good thing that I’ll be making my own from now on…ha ha.

The ubiquitous Skull photograph here…and below that a self portrait.