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From fire to flood to drought, how you feel about climate change-related disasters can be tricky to express in words.
It can also make you feel helpless, as Hilary Wardhaugh, Queanbeyan-based professional photographers, knows all too well.
During 2020’s horrific bushfire season, she came across countless dead ladybirds lying among ash at Potato Point, on the NSW South Coast.
“[I saw] lots of ash everywhere along the beach, and within the ash were millions of ladybirds. You could still see them, so they hadn’t been burnt, but they were all dead,” Ms Wardhaugh said.
The picture she took of that scene became the catalyst for a project now known as the Everyday Climate Crisis Visual Petition — a call to action from women and non-binary people.
Ms Wardhaugh stated, “It was heartbreaking. That’s why it’s why I wanted this project to begin.”
“I wanted to crowdsource images to illustrate climate change in Australia. I sourced images from women only and non-binary people.
Ms Wardhaugh’s goal is to collect 1,000 photographs; once that number is reached, the petition will be submitted to federal parliament as “a visual response to the Australian government’s climate change policies”.
Ms Wardhaugh stated, “What I hope is to do is have at the time the prime minister hold our petition up before parliament, rather than a lump coal,”
“1,000 photos are screaming from the rooftops”
Although it was only formalized at the Women See Change Event last week, Already 500 images with climate change themes have been uploaded to the petition from both amateur and professional photographers in its collection.
“There’s been a lot of images where people have done something quite creative in response to how climate change makes them feel,” Ms Wardhaugh said.
“We have people from all across Australia who have submitted. They come from all walks of life, including different backgrounds, cultures, and regions.
PhotoAccess’s Caitlin Selmour-King was instrumental in launching the petition. She said that photography is “a tremendously useful tool in the climate discussion, to represent viewpoints that aren’t being listened too”.
“I believe an image communicates something immediately. She said that we have a visceral reaction, a bodily, corporeal, response that communicates things much faster and more felt.
One of the most moving petition images Ms Seymour-King has seen so far was submitted by Lib Ferreira.
Ms Ferreira captured a kangaroo mob against a backdrop of smoke during the 2019-20 bushfire season at Queanbeyan Lawn Cemetery in southern NSW.
“The kangaroos represent all of us just trying to stay alive in this huge climate crisis … and they are helpless, in a way,” Ms Seymour-King said.
“But the kangaroos also have a funny side, because it’s hilarious to see them unaware that they are part of this message and campaign and this story.”
Unifying voices from across the country
Artist and poet Dr Judith Nangala Crispin, based in Womboin in NSW, was inspired to join the project after the 2020 bushfires devastated her region.
“We all go through terrible times, and part of the way that we cope with that as humans is we overwrite it with the better time that we’re in — but nothing brings back those times more clearly than a photograph,” Dr Nangala Crispin said.
Dr Nangala Crispin believes the petition could feature a “groundswell of voices”.
She said that “Women’s voices, First Nations voices, people who can be gender fluid, they all have been overwritten”
“But with this project, every single person who takes a photo gives permission for someone else to do the exact same.”
Dr Nangala C. Crispin said that photo stories are an important form of art because each angle captured through a lens is unique.
She stated that “you are always the most important person at that moment, regardless what your skill level.”
And, while the images are often confronting, Ms Seymour-King said the project was underpinned by a sense of collective hope.
She said that the word “hope” was something she thought was very important and she wanted it to be our anchor because it’s easy to sink into despair.
“But potentially we can do something [to affect change] together.
“Anyone can take a picture with a disposable camera or a smartphone and make something with it. You can also validate one another in that process.
