Welcome to the new IMPACT online exhibition, a project exploring the internet as a venue for insightful photographic work.
In an effort to remind viewers of the important role photographers play around the world, we invited an array of imagemakers to share galleries on their blogs (like this one) that comprise 12 images representing an experience when they had an impact on or were impacted. By clicking on the links below the IMPACT logo, you can move through the exhibition, viewing other galleries by different photographers. You can also click the IMPACT logo to be taken to a post on the liveBooks RESOLVE Blog where you can see an index of all participating photographers. We hope that by linking different photographic visions of our first topic, “Outside Looking In,” we can provide a multifaceted view of the topic as well as the IMPACT individuals can have on the world around us. -The IMPACT Team
Daniel Beltra spent much of 2009 working with the Prince’s Rainforests Project (PRP). The PRP commissioned Daniel to photograph for a month each rainforests in the Brazilian Amazon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Indonesia. The photos that Daniel produced during this time, along with some from his archive from previous years, were edited together to produce a book, online multimedia presentations, pamphlets and print exhibitions around the world. These various forms of media were aimed to help people make the connection between tropical deforestation and global warming and how their own consumption habits impact these processes.
Tropical deforestation is responsible for a fifth of the world’s carbon emissions. The economic forces of logging, mining and agricultural development destroy nearly 60 million square miles of virgin rainforests every year. Native plants are made extinct before they are ever documented and indigenous peoples find their land ever more encroached upon. Stopping, or at least slowing, tropical deforestation will mitigate the impact that global warming is already having on the planet.
Ending tropical deforestation can only happen if people are aware of it and the threats it poses thru climate change. Awareness of the connection between tropical deforestation and global warming will help people modify their lives and habits to make the impact of climate change as minimal as possible. Daniel hopes that his photos used by the PRP will help people understand these environmental and economic processes and the change they can affect upon them. Only the future will know whether or not the efforts we make today are enough to avoid environmental catastrophe for Earth.
Thank you for stopping by and please share any comments about the photos you might have.
danielbeltra.wordpress.com 
