Images Expose Issues of the Global Environment
By Georgia Tasker, The Miami Herald
Feb. 19–As the United Nations Environmental Program launches its 24th global council meeting, Fisher Island photographer Joe Zammit-Lucia is displaying environmental photos at the U.N. headquarters in New York.
Zammit-Lucia combines words and images in large panels examining such issues as energy use, endangered species and urban environments.
"Some are issues not normally thought of as environmental," he says. "In our urban environment, the biggest negative change is that we have no privacy anymore. That’s a huge change in how we live."
Zammit-Lucia, 50, was born in Malta but is a British citizen. He trained as a physician, then started a pharmaceutical consulting company in the British university town of Cambridge. That company eventually moved to New York. Zammit-Lucia sold it in 2001, and took up his lifelong love, photography.
Among his images for the U.N. exhibit, up through March 2, are strong portraits of animals such as a white rhino and a giraffe, taken out of their usual wild settings.
"There is a movement that says you photograph animals in their habitat," he says. "But we’re all too used to those images and we’ve stopped looking at them. So what I’m trying to do is put animals in a studio environment. People aren’t used to that. We need something too different to get people to stop and look."
Zammit-Lucia and his wife, Lindsey Matheson, live in South Florida from November to June. He is working on a book about China and next plans to photograph efforts at tropical conservation.
His photos are not representational, he says, but graphic. "My approach in imagery is not documentary. I try to engage people with a strong visual impact. Once you’ve arrested them, then maybe they can start a conversation with the subject.
"I see what you get in your camera as a base canvas," he says. "Once I have the shots, I try to pick those which seem most expressive. Then I work with them digitally to create the final image."
To get his work shown in the U.N. venue, Zammit-Lucia approached the Mission of Malta to the U.N. "They acted as a sponsor of the idea. We pitched it, and you go through a process where it is decided whether the work is acceptable and of the right quality."
Because he believes that conservation and environmental issues are too frequently about gloom, Zammit-Lucia decided "it might be time to talk about what things have been achieved. Everything starts with a first step."
A photo of two small fishing boats photographed on St. Lucia is accompanied by Zammit-Lucia’s text: ". . . the fishermen of Sufriere agreed to set aside a third of their fishing grounds as marine reserves. After seven years, fish stocks in the reserves rose by five times."
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Copyright (c) 2007, The Miami Herald
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
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