No polar bears, no wind farms: this outdoor exhibition asked 20 photographers to find new ways of showing the climate crisis, and they didn't hold back

The outdoor exhibition OPEN ECO featured 20 photographers who were tasked with finding new ways to depict the climate crisis through photography. Held at the Seafront Gallery in Brighton, England, the exhibition challenged the audience to think beyond clichéd images, such as wind farms or a solitary polar bear on a shrinking ice floe. Each artist presented a single photograph that responded to the question of how photography can make a difference in addressing climate change.

The exhibition displayed a diverse range of responses, highlighting the vast impact of the climate crisis on various aspects of our world. Mark Phillips presented The Rhone Glacier retreats, showcasing the protection efforts driven by tourism at a Swiss glacier. Dr. Gil Mualem-Doron's The Catch of the Day featured young Sri Lankans transforming plastic waste collected from beaches into wearable sculptures, serving as a reminder of the need to address pollution.

Other artists, like Kerstin Rudnick and Halfdan Hallseth, focused on nature reclaiming spaces left behind by human activity. Rudnick's As times go bye displayed vegetation overtaking abandoned cars in Sweden, while Hallseth's Monument depicted a tree growing through layers of concrete and decay in the ruins of Chernobyl's Reactor 5, symbolizing nature's resilience.

The exhibition also shed light on the consequences of human actions, as seen in Rebecca Goddard's Fly, which captured the impact of fly-tipped waste in England, and Ann Petruckevitch's Kilometres to where?, which illustrated the devastation caused by bushfires along an Australian highway. Through these various images, the photographers aimed to provoke thought, action, and reflection on the urgent need to tackle the climate crisis.