Since 2001, photographer Sasha Bezzubov has traversed the planet to capture on film the physical wrath wrought by the increasingly frequent natural disasters. In his breathtaking series "Things Fall Apart," Bezzubov large format photographs present mother nature's fury in startling detail. Devoid of human-presence, these images engage us in a reckoning with both nature and our lasting imprint upon her.
In an interview with Brooks, Bezzubov describes his "existential epiphany" that inspired him to start taking global warming photographs:
...I had started to think about our fragility after a series of very destructive hurricanes in 1998 that ravaged the Caribbean and parts of Florida. Watching these events on TV I had a kind of existential epiphany that went something like this: we spend the better part of our lives making ourselves comfortable. We work hard, we build a house, we live the dream. A heavy wind comes and turns our dream into smelly debris. We wake up the next morning and start over like an ant colony...
Later in the interview, Bezzubov elaborates about what was so special about the 1998 hurricane season that seems to have eluded most of the rest of my fellow Floridians:
In 1998 I watched the news as the coast of Florida was torn apart by a major hurricane. The occurrence of natural disasters has since become more commonplace, but at that time, it was still unusual. I was taken by the images I saw. I had rarely seen anything of the sort, at least not in peacetime...
Hurricanes unusual in Florida before 1998? Uh, have you ever heard of Hurricane Andrew that devasted the southern part of Miami-Dade county just 6 years earlier, Sasha? In fact, hurricanes have been a regular occurence in Florida long before Bezzubov was even born when no one had ever even heard the term "global warming." So eager is Bezzubov to push the global warming theme that he became enraged by references to arson and evacuations in news accounts about the recent fires in Southern California:
...During the recent fires in Southern California, I was frustrated by how much time was wasted by the networks on questions of possible arson and the success of evacuations, with virtually nothing said about the larger implications of the frequency and potency of these fires - the semi-permanent conditions of drought resulting from global warming, the unscrupulous building/developing policies which render the land more fire prone and makes it impossible to let the fires burn themselves out. Since 2001 I've been making photographs of landscapes after natural disasters all over the world.
Meanwhile, Our Miss Brooks gushingly describes Bezzubov's global warming photos with reverent awe:
The detail you capture, which is hard to show on the Internet, is truly stunning. It's as if they were taken by the offspring of Ansel Adams and Edgar Allen Poe.
Bezzubov not only photographs the "effects" of global warming but he also has suggestions on how to counter it, including the human race ceasing to exist:
...I think that if we need to make economic sacrifices to slow climate change and other deleterious effects of our industry, and this is debatable, they are preferable to the possibility of living out our days in a hostile world of warming climate, increasing natural disasters and diminishing resources. And in my little ways I'm trying to live that ideal. On the other hand if we all stopped reproducing tomorrow, in a hundred years Earth would be human-free, which may be the most environment friendly act.
The global warming photographic art exhibit shtick seems to be working out well for Bezzubov. A monograph of the global warming themed "Things Fall Apart" will be published by Nazraelli Press this year and his global warming photography show will be presented at Chaffey College in California and in the Bronx. No word yet on when there will be a global warming film festival or a global warming dog and pony show.
