I’m excited to announce here on my blog the launch of my new Archive, which will be home to many of my images, created over the past 5 years whilst working in China.
I hope that site can act as a resource for those looking for unique and illustrative imagery focusing on Asia, China and environmental issues.
All the images within the archive are thoroughly captioned and keyworded to assist you in locating exactly the images you need.
I will be constantly updating this archive in the coming months with new work and existing stories. Please take a moment to have a look around and recommend the archive to anyone whom you know who may be interested in imagery from Asia.
“Is it always like this?” I ask one of the park wardens, as I weave my way through the hundreds of tourists, all shuffling to get into the regimented lines funneling them into the park’s gates. “Well, this is peak season. There could be up to 10,000 people going into the park today,” he replies. This is the definition of mass tourism and it is taking place before me on a warm July morning in the mountains of northern Sichuan, at the gates of one of the country’s most famous tourist destinations, the Jiuzhaigou National Park.
Nestled high in the remote mountains of northern Sichuan, the Jiuzhaigou National Park is a spectacular area composed a series of valleys, containing a myriad of breathtaking turquoise lakes, rivers and waterfalls. They are surrounded by temperate broad-leaf forests that are home to the giant panda, red panda and golden monkey, among many other species. Its topography has been shaped over millennia by tectonic activity and glacial erosion which has created an entrancing visual setting.
It is this unique setting that has caused the rise in popularity of this park since the early 1990s, when it was awarded Unesco World Heritage status. Since then, visitor numbers have increased year by year. In 2007, it was estimated that 2.5 million people visited the Jiuzhaigou Park.
As tourists enter, they are bused between popular locations within the boundaries of the protected area. They regularly stop to jump off the buses, take pictures and then immediately return to their transportation to continue to the next spot. Their movements are tightly restricted to boardwalks which result in surprisingly little direct impact to the local ecosystems. The relatively small 720 sq. km. of valleys that make up the park, are arguably the best protected in the whole of China.
A quick post for the weekend of one of my favourite images from the last week of shooting in Chengdu, Sichuan. As you can probably guess, this image is of a Giant Panda, taken at the Chengdu Panda Base in Sichuan Province. I was at the base this past week photographing the Pandas and interviewing scientists and staff as part of the next chapter in my ‘China’s Fragile Forests’ Series for the Pulitzer Center. The post will be coming soon, so please stay tuned. If you’ve missed my other posts and images from this new project, why not check them out over on the excellent Pulitzer site here.
A woman holds tea leaves collected from a plantation nestled in the remote mountainous valleys of northern Sichuan. Tea plantations are some of the projects being targeted by the EU-China Biodiversity Programme to promote sustainable harvesting in the region.
Haze enveloped the mountains as our car pushed further up the steep valleys into northern Sichuan. The green hills that fluttered past our window were a patchwork of forests, cleared areas and fields of maize. The road wound through the vertiginous ravines as we climbed steadily higher, pushing further towards the small town of Pingwu, nestled deep in the mountains.
I was travelling with a delegation from the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the EU-China Biodiversity Program (ECBP) whose aim was to visit a number of sites in northern Sichuan where they have been sponsoring projects. The goals of these projects are to promote sustainable harvesting as an alternative to the exploitation and unsustainable collection of the forest’s resources that has been occurring in the region for many decades.
“China is one of the world’s 12 mega-biodiversity countries, but during the past decades we have had amazing economic development, so we are facing serious problems of biodiversity loss,” explained the UNDP’s Lu Chunming as our car snaked up a hillside to the first of our intended sites.
I am really delighted to share the news here on my blog that my multimedia piece, ‘Dongting: A Lake In Flux” recently won 1st Prize in the prestigious British Press Photographer’s Year 2011. These awards highlight some of the best wotk from British photographers working around the world, so am honoured to be included in their list of awardees this year. I am also especially grateful to the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting who sponsored the production of this work last year, as part of my Threatened Waters Project.
An exhibition of all the awarded work is now on at the National Theatre in London and runs from the 18th July to the 4th September. If you’re passing by, drop in and see some of the incredible work on show.
The mountains of northern Sichuan Province, China.
This month is an exciting one as I begin my third Pulitzer Center-sponsored project on environmental issues in China titled, “China’s Fragile Forests“.
I begin this month with the first installment from my travels throughout the south-west of China, the region hardest hit by deforestation in the late 20th Century and currently facing the most challenges as the Chinese people struggle to find a balance with their forest resources.
Please find below the first of my installments from the field. There are many more to come in the coming weeks. As ever, I look forward to your thoughts!
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Felled trees in northern Sichuan Province. 2011
Forest ecosystems throughout the world are key to the livelihoods of over 1.6 billion people. They cover 31 percent of the world’s land area, are home to over 300 million people, and contain 80 percent of the world’s terrestrial biodiversity.
Thirty percent of forests worldwide also produce both wood and non-wood products that account for a trade of over $300 billion worldwide, per year. It is this trade that is threatening the planet’s remaining forests, as developing nations battle to find a sustainable relationship with their natural resources.
Today, June 17th, marks the United Nations‘ World Day to Combat Desertification. As regular readers of this blog and followers of my work will know, a large portion of my work in recent years has been about the scourge of increasing desertification in China. Please take this opportunity today to spread links and talk about the issue of desertification, one of our world’s most pressing and under-reported environmental crises.
According to the United Nations:
“Desertification, land degradation and drought (DLDD) threaten human security by depriving people of the means to decent livelihoods. They undercut food production, access to water and the means to economic activity, and even destroy their homes. At worst, they lead to a breakdown in national and regional security as people are forced to leave their homes or to engage in low- or high-level intensity conflicts over increased or extended periods of resource scarcity.
Land degradation in the drylands, commonly known as desertification, begins with the clearing of vegetation, which means “forests are the first step towards healing the drylands and protecting them from desertification and drought,” as Mr Luc Gnacadja, Executive Secretary of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification observes. Dry forests may become the single most important determinant of the future sustainability of the drylands as the impacts of climate change escalate. Yet, only 18% of the drylands is forested.
UN Drylands World Map - Desertification
The United Nations has designated 2011 as the International Year of Forests to stress the need for forests that serve people. Scientists and experts agree that this link is most evident and felt in the drylands where trees play multiple roles for the communities. They provide food and medicine for the people and their livestock. They are their places of worship and shelter and their decision-making centers. Trees mean life here and are not taken for granted by the close to 2 billion inhabitants that call drylands ‘home’.
In his call to the international community in February when unveiling the 2011 theme, Mr. Gnacadja stated, “If each of us makes the commitment and ensures that just one tree is planted in a degraded part of the drylands and that the tree survives through the year, we could have well over two billion trees in the drylands by the end of the year. That is a tree for every inhabitant. …let us go forth and forest the drylands to keep them working for present and future generations.”
It has been a little while since my last update here on the blog, for which I apologise. It has been a very busy few weeks with lots of shoots and lots of travels. As a way to say thanks for your patience (if you have dropped in on here recently and found no updates!) is to offer you a sneak peak at some the images I took recently that will be making their way into a new multimedia piece that I am working on this week, as a coninuation of my work on China’s wetlands crisis.
Zhalong Wetlands - Heilongjiang - China
Last week I travelled to the province of Heilongjiang, which lies in the north-east of China. I travelled to this region as it was one of the last regions of the country that I had not had the opportunity to get to during my coverage of environmental issues in China over the past couple of years. This area is crucial to China as it is the ‘bread basket’ of the nation, producing vast amounts of food which are fuelling the people of China to make some of the amazing economic changes we have seen over the past few decades.
With summer almost upon us, I know many photographers are wondering what on earth their wardrobe contains that will ensure they stand out from the crowds of other photographers this season. Forget scarves. In case something goes wrong with your camera, why not have a t-shirt which doubles as a mini schematic of how your camera works?! The above t-shirt can be purchased in UniQlo in Beijing for the bargain price of 100rmb (US$15).
If schematics are not your thing, then you might want to head for the slightly more understated white t-shirt with simplified Canon EOS motif. Two, surely ‘must have’ items for this year’s summer wardrobe
Followers of my blog will know that since last summer, I have been working on a project photographing and creating multimedia reports about the state of China’s wetlands, sponsored by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
The above video is the third in a series of seven that I am producing. Four and five are already complete, with six and seven coming very soon, however, I am working with a well known organisation to launch these as one package in the coming months. Much more on this soon…
I hope you enjoy the above video which highlights the plight of Dongting Lake, one of China’s most vital water systems. To view the first two installments of these videos, please head to my Vimeo channel here.
Welcome to the blog of Sean Gallagher, a British photojournalist, videographer and multimedia producer based in Beijing, China.
Sean specializes in covering environmental issues in Asia, with specific emphasis on China. This blog is updated with posts about Sean's life as a professional photojournalist.
Sean's work has featured in news outlets including Newsweek, The New York Times, The Guardian and Der Spiegel. He is also a contributing photographer to the National Geographic Image Collection.
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