Eco Anxiety, Grief, Awe, and Finding Hopeful Signs in a Precarious World with Lynne Buchanan & Susan Preston
Eco Anxiety, Grief, Awe, and Finding Hopeful Signs in a Precarious World with Lynne Buchanan & Susan Preston
Join us via Zoom on Wednesday, October 15th, at 7 pm EDT
Join photographers and eco-activists Lynne Buchanan and Susan Preston as they share their experiences documenting threatened waterways around the world. In addition to the heartbreaking existential threats posed by rising ocean temperatures, global air currents, and the climate crisis, they are documenting the unique ways the environment regenerates and/or evolves even after extreme storms and unprecedented geological events.
Together, we will be questioning the role photography plays in bearing witness to catastrophic events. Can awe be a pathway to love for the world, and an inspiration for direct action?
Lynne Buchanan is a climate artist whose poetic work focuses on the importance and threats that face waterways and forests around the world. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans and The Bishop Museum in Florida, and it has been featured in The New York Times. Buchanan’s photographs have been exhibited in over 60 solo and group exhibitions in museums and galleries across the United States and in Europe. Her latest book of photographs and haikus, The Poetry of Being, was published by Daylight Books in May 2023 and received silver awards in the Budapest and Tokyo International Foto Awards. She is also the author and photographer of Florida’s Changing Waters: A Beautiful World in Peril, published by George F. Thompson Publishing. Public speaking includes talks given at the Miami Book Fair, as well as at the Society for Environmental Journalism and the North American Nature Photography Association’s Summit. Buchanan has also contributed articles for Waterkeeper Magazine and her work has been featured in numerous publications including features in Black + White Photography, Photobook Journal, Artdoc Photography Magazine, Shots Magazine, South X Southeast Photomagazine, and Lenscratch, among others. Buchanan currently works and resides in Fletcher, NC.
Susan J. Preston is a bird and nature photographer whose work intersects the realms of visual art, mindfulness practice, and the human need for experiences of beauty to survive and flourish. Through her photography and insightful writing, Susan delves deep into the heartfelt experiences of awe and wonder that nature instills in us, while also staying present to the suffering of the more-than-human world with open eyes. Her work serves as a powerful testament to the interconnection and fragility of all life on Earth, urging us to appreciate, reflect, and act on behalf of our planet, which is to act with great compassion toward ourselves. As a long-time meditator with roots in ecophilosophy and contemplative practices, her photographic practice emerges from the natural sense of relationship that emerges when we pay close attention, and our human obligation to reciprocate the many gifts of this one precious life.
