I was in one of the most urbanised and highest per capita CO₂ producing countries in the world, which has no forest whatsoever.

I was intrigued to escape the urban centres and to venture alone into the desolate landscape.

I encountered a lone sidra tree, sculpted by the wind.

An iconic symbol of the country’s heritage, the sidra tree has grown in the deserts of Qatar for generations.

It grows strong in the harshest of environments, a lone beacon of comfort and hope. A symbolic contrast to the urban environment.

One in every two of the oxygen molecules that we need to breathe comes from the photosynthesis of algae.  They are the main suppliers of oxygen both in the world’s oceans and across its land surface.  Our existence and the existence of all other organisms living in water depend on algae.

Big Life rangers from Esiteti (in Amboseli, Kenya) discover the body of a wildebeest that appears to have died from the drought.  When the rains fail, food and water is in short supply.

In the age where we constantly question the relationship between human beings and nature, the Humanature project, including this photograph, came into being as a subconscious selection of images that represent the current mood of such conversations.  The picture was taken at Copenhagen Zoo.  Humanature does not deliver an answer or directs attention towards a particular issue, but preserves a studied neutrality and leaves the interpretation to the spectator.

I have tried to create a paradox by reversing the normal way we look at things.  By using a negative image, I created an unfamiliar viewpoint by making ice look hot.  The cracks in the glaciers have become the cracks of a volcano, and the expanses of water have become red-hot land surfaces.  The photographic inversion from positive to negative does not change the actual state of things: water remains water, of course, and ice remains ice.  Nor do the images present a solution to the environmental problem.  Nevertheless, I hope they provide food for thought.  Water is a fundamental element in our daily experience, and it is disconcerting to see it reimagined as heat and fire.  I hope that everyone who sees this image thinks about the harm we are doing to our planet, and reflects on whether they are doing enough themselves to change matters.  It only needs a small effort to change our behavior.  If we do, we are helping to save the planet from the consequences of so much past thoughtlessness.

Due to the impacts of climate change and human engineering, South Louisiana finds it increasingly difficult to hold back encroaching water as the state continues to lose more land to the sea.  Much reportage on Louisiana’s land loss crisis has a dominant visual narrative focused on aerial imagery and destruction.  With this body of work, I seek to encourage speculation on the future development of coastal environments and the limits to human manipulations of a landscape.

Although uranium is no longer mined in the territories of the Navajo Nation, a Native American tribe, former mining activities have left the tribe with an enduring legacy of environmental pollution.  The effects of exposure to air contaminated with uranium have adversely affected the health of many members of the Navajo tribe.

The village of Geamana has had to be abandoned, because the wanton dumping of acidic sewage in its lake has poisoned its environment.  The sewage, which contains metals such as copper, iron, zinc, lead and arsenic, is slowly engulfing the abandoned village, and the lake now glows vividly in unnatural colours.  Its waters have been contaminated with cyanide, which destroyed all the vegetation and forced all animal life to move elsewhere.  The environmental damage can be clearly seen from the tower of the village church, which just keeps its head above the sludge.  The shadow cast by the church resembles one of the nails with which Jesus was crucified.

My work centres around my personal connection with Nature, where landscapes act as sanctuaries in my search for silence, solitude and containment.  In this project, I experiment with the materiality of the photographic medium, by manipulating and distorting landscapes.  Through these violent gestures my intention is to allude to the damage inflicted by human beings on the environment, thereby questioning our relationship with the natural world.