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IMPACT: an online exhibition | Desertification Unseen

Monday, February 22nd, 2010
“Desertification is one of the most serious threats facing humanity”
- Kofi Annan, former UN Secretary General. World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought. 2006.
“The dryness affects our lives a lot. We call it the ‘black disaster’, which means there is no grass. On the grassland, we are afraid of this disaster”, says Zamusu, a farmer who has lived his entire life on the central grasslands of  Inner Mongolia, in Northern China. These legendary grasslands are slowly deteriorating, suffering as a result of the world’s least reported environmental crisis.
Desertification is the gradual transformation of arable and/or habitable land into desert, usually caused by overpopulation, water mismanagement, poor farming methods, the destructive use of land by industry and climate change.
38% of the world’s surface area is now threatened by desertification, affecting countries across the world from North Africa, the countries of the Middle East, Australia, China and the western edge of South America.
“If we don’t take action, current trends suggest that by 2020 an estimated 60 million people could move from desertified areas of sub-Saharan Africa towards North Africa and Europe, and that worldwide, 135 million people could be placed at risk of being uprooted”, Kofi Annan (2006).
In 2007 I began photographing the issue of desertification and how it was affecting the lives of people in one of the world’s hardest hit countries, China. With the help of grants from a leading photojournalism agency in 2008 and a leading news organization in 2009, I was able to travel over 4000km overland to document how the people of China are being affected by this crisis, which has consumed over 20% of their country.
To learn more about how you can help combat desertification, please visit the Million Tree Project which aims to reforest areas of Inner Mongolia being affected by desertification.

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 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

Please find below my contribution to this exhibition: “Desertification Unseen”, a look at some of my lesser known desertification images and some that have not been released before, accompanied by text outlining the severity of this current crisis. – Sean Gallagher

 IMPACT: an online exhibition | Desertification Unseen

Dry and cracked soil in Gansu Province.2009

Desertification is one of the most serious threats facing humanity”- Kofi Annan, former UN Secretary General. World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought. 2006.

Desertification in China | Sean Gallagher Photography | Beijing | China

A tourist stands on one of the large sand dunes that make up the Shapotou Desert tourist resort. The resort has provided jobs for local residents and has been a way for the local economy to benefit from the desert. 2009

“The dryness affects our lives a lot. We call it the ‘black disaster’, which means there is no grass. On the grassland, we are afraid of this disaster”, says Zamusu, a farmer who has lived his entire life on the central grasslands of  Inner Mongolia, in Northern China. These legendary grasslands are slowly deteriorating, suffering as a result of the world’s least reported environmental crisis.

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International Migrants Day – Fund Raiser – Dec 18th

Tuesday, December 15th, 2009

International Migrants Day

International Migrants Day

“The UN proclamation of the annual International Migrants Day offers a rallying point for everyone across the world who is concerned with migrants. It is an opportunity to recognise the contributions made by millions of migrants to the well-being and economies of their countries.” – Compassion for Migrant Children

This Friday, 18th Dec, will see the China-based NGO Compassion for Migrant Children (CMC) host a fund-raiser in conjunction with International Migrants day. The event will be held at the New Cultural Art Center at the 798 Art District in Beijing from 7pm until late and will involve a Chuan’r bar, live music and a silent auction of photographs donated by local photographers.

I am happy to say that a few prints of mine will be available in the silent auction. So, if you are in the area on Friday night, please come down, pay 50rmb, enjoy the festivites and maybe even go home with a print. If you can find me at the event, I’ll happily sign it for you!

To get more info, visit the event website here. Hope to see you there.

FotoWeek DC Update

Wednesday, November 11th, 2009

David Alan Harvey Presents... (c) Brendan Hoffman

David Alan Harvey Presents... (c) Brendan Hoffman

*UPDATE* For lots more photos from this great exhibition, please head here at brightyoungthings.com

This will be a very quick post, but wanted to show you the print of mine in the David Alan Harvey Presents… exhibition over at PhotoWeek DC at the moment. As you can see, the prints have been almost ’strung-up’, hanging side by side clipped onto a metal or nylon string…can’t quite tell. It’s quite an interesting way to display the prints and I actually think it represents the ‘raw’ style that Burn is coming to be down for. A little different, loose, constantly changing.

Photo above is courtesy of Mr. Brendan Hoffman, Capitol Hill photographer extraordinaire. Next blog post will have more about him and our trip behind the scenes at the senate in DC.

FotoWeekDC | David Alan Harvey Presents… & Critical Exposure Auction

Monday, November 9th, 2009

FOTOWEEK DC

FOTOWEEK DC

If you are in the Washington DC area this week, then you should make a beeline for the wealth of photography events they on this week as part of FOTOWEEKDC. I am slightly miffed as I spent the best part of last week in DC and had to leave just before all the events kicked off. Oh well, these things happen, but I am happy as two of my images will be featuring in two different events during the FotoWeek.

The first image is one from my series on desertification in China and it will be in the David Alan Harvey Presents… exhibition. For details of where to find it, please go here. As many of you will already know, this image was featured on David’s Burn magazine a few months ago. I actually bumped into David just the other day when I was in New York. He was passing through on his way to FotoWeek, but we managed to grab a coffee in his apartment in ‘the Kibbutz’ in Brooklyn.  He had just come back the night before from a workshop in Mexico, was off to FotoWeek briefly and then was heading back to Mexico again for another workshop. I thought I had a busy schedule, but David takes it to another level!

Desertification in China

David Alan Harvey Presents...Desertification in China

My second image in FotoWeek DC will be part of the Critical Exposure Auction. Critical Exposure is an organisation that promotes young people to use photography as a form of empowerment and provides opportunities for them to change their lives using photography. I was approached last month to donate a print (see image below) to their auction, which will be held on November 12th. More details here. If you are around Georgetown at that time, please head down to support them and maybe even bid for my print!

Critical Exposure Auction | North Korea

Critical Exposure Auction | North Korea

burn.gallery.show

Saturday, October 10th, 2009
burn.gallery.show

burn.gallery.show

Yesterday and today, or today and tomorrow, depending on your time zone sees the launch of the new burn.gallery.show. This is one of the newest ventures for Burn magazine to raise funds and increase exposure for this new and exciting online photography magazine. If you have been living under a little bit of a rock in photography circles recently, then you may not have heard about Burn, the brainchild of the legendary Magnum and National Geographic photographer David Alan Harvey.

I first met David in 2003 when I attended one of his workshops in Lisbon, Portugal. At that time, I was an english teacher in Japan and was experimenting with photography and looking for inspiration, hence I travelled back to Europe to participate in one of his workshops. What I found was a man of incredible passion and enthusiasm for photography that was palpably infectious. Attending his workshop was one of the most important things that happened to me, photographically. On presenting my portfolio to David, he deconstructed it in a way I had never had explained to me before. Critical of many of the photos he saw, only a couple remained the critique that he barely liked. I decided from that moment to prove him, and most importantly myself, that I was able to create good pictures.

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Images from Exhibition Opening at the International Conference on Desertification Control

Friday, August 14th, 2009

Desertification in China

Please find below, a selection of images from my exhibition opening this morning in the city hall of the the city of Wulanhaote, in Inner Mongolia as part of the International Conference of Science and Technology on Desertification Control (ICSTDC). The above image is the leading shot in the exhibition.

The opening was a great success this morning with guests to the conference taking in the exhibit before the main opening ceremony. Today consisted of opening lectures from various Chinese and International scientists. The topics were as diverse as the speakers with talks covering subjects such as the history of desertification in China, agricultural ways to combat desertification, urban desertification and alternative energy sources from the desert.

I speak tomorrow morning here at the conference, presenting my 2 years of work covering desertification in China in a presentation titled “Desertification in China: A Photographic Journey.” I shall hopefully upload images and audio tomorrow from my talk.

I hope you enjoy the images of my exhibition opening!

First Day at the International Conference on Desertification Control

Thursday, August 13th, 2009
pass First Day at the International Conference on Desertification Control

My 'Representative' pass for the 2nd International Conference on Science and Technology for Desertification Control (ICSTDC)

After a 19 hour train journey from Beijing, I have finally arrived in the north-eastern city of Wulanhaote in Inner Mongolia. I’m here for the next 4 days to attend the 2nd International Conference on Science & Technology for Desertification Control – a gathering of some 200 people all linked by one thing – their interest in the fight against desertification.

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Photo of the Week | 10.08.09 | Inner Mongolia

Monday, August 10th, 2009
Sat on the steps of a yurt, a tourist adjusts her traditional mongolian clothing. Traditional life has all but disappeared on the Inner Mongolian Grasslands, along with much of the grass which has been damaged by overgrazing. 2009

Sat on the steps of a yurt, a tourist adjusts her traditional mongolian clothing. Traditional life has all but disappeared on the Inner Mongolian Grasslands, along with much of the grass in places, which has been damaged by overgrazing. 2009

This week’s ‘Photo of the Week’ was taken in Inner Mongolia earlier this year, during my 6-week trip for the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. I have chosen this photo this week because on Wednesday, I am heading back to Inner Mongolia to take part in the International Conference of Science & Technology on Desertification Control. I have been invited there to speak to the 150+ scientists, experts and businessmen attending, on the subject of desertification and my coverage of the issue for the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. As I type this post, I have some 50 prints being printed, all to be shown as an exhibition in Wulanhaote, where the conference is being hosted.

I am really looking forward to this conference as it will be a great opportunity to bring my photography and work on desertification to a new audience and an important one at that. As photographers, we want people to see our images. We want as many people as possible to see them. This is great, but sometimes a targeted approach is equally good. Many of China’s leading experts on desertification and environmental issues shall be at this conference, therefore I have an opportunity to emphasise to them the importance of photography and its role in communicating scientific and environmental issues to the public.

I shall be sure to post from the conference and update about some of the key issues being discussed. I shall also post images of the final hanging of the exhibition. Thanks again to all who offered advice on the hanging, both here on the blog and over at Lightstalkers.

How Would You Hang This Exhibition?

Saturday, August 8th, 2009

I have been invited to have an exhibition next week, which will showcase 48 images from my work on desertification in China over the past 2 years, at a Science and Technology Conference on Desertification Control in Inner Mongolia.

The details of the space I have available for the exhibition have been sent through to me at the very last minute and I am trying to brainstorm ways to hang this exhibition in an effective way.

I have been informed that I will have 40 wooden boards, measuring 120cm x 80cm, almost like an artist’s sketching easel, standing on wooden legs.

The prints aren’t going to be able to be framed in the time we have, so I also need to find a way to ‘stick’ the prints to the boards. Pins? Double-sided tape? Needs to look professional either way.

I’m completely open to ideas from my readership here, so if you have any thoughts, I’d be more than happy to hear them. Make them quick though, as I have 24hours before I head to the printers!

Many thanks in advance!

China’s Growing Sands Exhibition Extended for One Month

Friday, August 7th, 2009

China's Growing Sands - Exhibition Opening

I’m happy to announce that my exhibition, ‘China’s Growing Sands‘, which is on show at Cafe Zarah in central Beijing, has been extended by one month until the beginning of September. If you haven’t had a chance to swing by, you now have an extra month to drop-in to check out the show!

All of the prints are still on sale, priced at just under 1800 Chinese RMB (US$264 approx / 157 GBP approx. as of exchange rates today). A few of them however have already been sold, but there are still plenty available. If there is a particular image you are interested in, please drop me a line to check its availability.

Once the exhibition has finished, I’ll be selling the remaining prints right here on my blog, so please stay tuned for more details on that.

If you missed my post with images from the exhibition opening, please find it here.

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