VISUALIZING BIODIVERSITY: The Role of Photographs in Environmental Discourse

摘要

Photographs have had an important role to play in the 'environmental awakening' since the 1960s. If people had not been alerted to the environmental crisis earlier, they certainly were shaken by the images they were shown in their living rooms of oiled seabirds, poisoned fish and forests destroyed by acid rain. At the same time wonders-of-nature documentaries and colourful nature books have continued to offer images of untouched, not-yet destroyed nature. In juxtaposing 'virgin' nature with the nature man has shaped and contaminated, one aim is to get people to take action for conservation. This is most typical of photographs published in newspapers and magazines, television news footage as well as nature documentaries. Images serve to arouse emotions, to stimulate action or to open up windows on the nature that still seems to exist somewhere out there. Indeed photographs are often used to provide proof of dramatic environmental changes. Other types of scientific illustrations are also used for the same end of providing incontrovertible evidence: these may include maps describing the thinning of the ozone layer or graphs illustrating the advance of climate change.