Photographer David Arnold '67 captures climate change
April 17 presentation headlines a number of Earth Day events at Andover
April 11, 2012
—Phillips Academy will commemorate Earth Day 2012 with a special presentation by photographer and journalist David Arnold ’67 titled “Climate Change: Photographing the Reality, Above and Below the Waterline,” on Tuesday, April 17, at 8 p.m. in Kemper Auditorium. This event is free and open to the public.
Arnold will base the photo presentation and lecture on his climate change exhibition “Double Exposure: Photographing Environmental Change,” now on national tour. With an eye-opening photo presentation as backdrop, he will discuss the impacts of climate change on glaciers and coral reefs.
In his glacier project, completed in 2008, Arnold recreated the perspective of aerial photographs taken by renowned mountaineer Bradford Washburn in the 1930s in Alaska and Switzerland. A careful comparison of the “then and now” photographs starkly reveals how significantly the glaciers have shrunk in the past 75-plus years. Examining the state of the world’s coral reefs, Arnold documents the drastic changes in these iconic sentinels that result from ocean warming and acidification.
“Climate Change: Photographing the Reality, Above and Below the Waterline” caps a week of Earth Day events at Andover, including an All-School Meeting address by environmental filmmakers Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, of “King Corn” and “Big River” fame. The two will travel to campus in their “Truck Farm” (a pickup truck-slash-vegetable garden), which will be honored on Tuesday, April 18 with a community, lunch-time cookout.
Other campus events during the week of April 16 include:
- Farm to Fork Meal and “Green Menus” throughout the week
- An Earth Day contest sponsored by the Oliver Wendell Holmes Library
- An archival exhibition of previous Earth Day celebrations at Andover
- A spring planning session for the Abbot Phillips Community Garden
- Visits from some of Paresky’s sustainable food suppliers, including North Coast Seafood, NorthStar, Stonyfield Farm and Highlawn Farm