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- passionate visual spokesperson concerning climate change -global temperatures threaten the Antarctic ice to melt - in the last sixty years, the poles have warmed up to more than twice the rate of the rest of the world, while the Antarctica Peninsula has warmed by up to five times the global average --the poles hold thirty percent of the worlds water, and Antarctica, 90 percent of its fresh water - melting ice is projected to raise ocean levels as much as twenty feet within as little as a century, threatening to displace up to 80% of the worlds population -Within as little as 80 years, 35% of the worlds species will disappear -Polar Bears will be extinct in the North, and many Penguins species will disappear in the South

-American photographer (1944-) who has portrayed Greenland in particular -For over twenty years I have made the long journey from New York to Greenland to photograph the giant icebergs that calve off the glacier in Ilulissat, a small town on the northwest coast that faces Disco Bay, and beyond, the Labrador Sea. My first trip to the Arctic was in 1986. Four journeys later, in 2007, my journeys came to a melancholy end when the giant glacier had become so diminished in size that icebergs, such as I had known them, became almost impossible to find.

-Nature transformed through industry is a predominant theme in my work. I set course to intersect with a contemporary view of the great ages of man; from stone, to minerals, oil, transportation, silicon, and so on. To make these ideas visible I search for subjects that are rich in detail and scale yet open in their meaning. Recycling yards, mine tailings, quarries and refineries are all places that are outside of our normal experience, yet we partake of their output on a daily basis.

-My images are meant as metaphors to the dilemma of our modern existence; they search for a dialogue between attraction and repulsion, seduction and fear. We are drawn by desire - a chance at good living, yet we are consciously or unconsciously aware that the world is suffering for our success. Our dependence on nature to provide the materials for our consumption and our concern for the health of our planet sets us into an uneasy contradiction (Burtynski) --notion of a chapter: from extraction, to notion of transportation and the end of oil

-BP oil spill in thethe Gulf of Mexico oil spill which flowed unabated for three months in 2010 - largest accidental marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry - spill stemmed from a sea-floor oil gusher that resulted from the April 20, 2010, explosion of Deepwater Horizon, which drilled on the BP-operated Macondo Prospect -explosion killed 11 men working on the platform and injured 17 others - on July 15, 2010, the leak was stopped by capping the gushing wellhead after it had released about 4.9 million barrels of crude oil - an estimated 53,000 barrels per day escaped from the well just before it was capped. -On September 19, 2010, the relief well process was successfully completed - In August 2011, oil and oil sheen covering several square miles of water were reported surfacing not far from BPs Macondo well - spill caused extensive damage to marine and wildlife habitats and to the Gulfs fishing and tourism industries - Mobile Offshore Drilling Unit (MODU), which was owned and operated by Transocean and drilling for BP in the Macondo Prospect oil field

-American photographer (born 1957) whose work takes a look at the profound cost of oil exploitation in West Africa - work traces the fifty-year impact of Nigerias relationship to oil interests and the resulting environmental degradation and community conflicts that have plagued the region -image of Old Bonny Town on Bonnie Island, where palm oil trade previously thrived - now the town is in poverty while the oil and gas companies continue to grow

-first wellhead was tapped in 1958, more than $500 billion dollars of wealth has been pumped out of the fertile grounds and remote creeks of one of Africas largest deltas and the world's third largest wetland -petroleum production has caused devastating pollution to the Niger Delta because of uninterrupted gas flaring and oil spillage -these operations have destroyed the traditional livelihoods of the Niger Delta and provided one of the most compelling examples of social and economic injustice on the planet, juxtaposing the phenomenal wealth produced by the oil industry against the abject poverty and lack of development for the local people - oil companies, led by Chevron, Total, Agip and Royal Dutch Shell, have transformed what was once a waterlogged equatorial forest, stripping away mangroves to lay 4,500 miles of pipelines, over 150 oil fields and 275 flow stations

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- infinite landscape of garbage - garbage dump in Chimalhuacn, Mexico City, which extends up to the horizon --from distance the work appears abstract (-2m big), and, with its colourful spots, recalls the drippings of the action paintings by Jackson Pollock - the garbage covers nearly every part of the photography, plastic bags are floating above the scenery, almost frozen in the air - large format and the almost endless variety of details pull the beholder deeper into the picture -like an archaeologist viewer examines the surface of the garbage to receive further information

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-Japanese photographer (born 1967) - in China everything is under constant construction, meanwhile tradition and traditional values seem to disappear - rubbish dumps covered with the 'shield', a green netting, are a ubiquitous phenomenon in China -thoughtful and timely series inspired by traditional Chinese paintings - analogue reworked by computer to create images of rural mountain landscapes shrouded in the mist

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-most circular or rounded window-like compositions floating on a white ground, 47 inches square -neutral backgrounds and compressed spaces suggest traditional Chinese landscape paintings - the works even bear the red signature stamps and collection seals known as chop marks -Yao subtly critiques Chinas willingness to sacrifice its history and despoil the environment in its breathtaking sprint to modernization - Yaos pictures also touch on the tradition of the sublime, here with humanity overwhelmed not by nature but by the forces of commerce and progress and its consequences of waste

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-Canadian photographer (born 1951) - book After the Flood documents area of New Orleans affected by Hurricane Katrina - immediate aftermath of the flooding, the demolition of the houses and environment of entire communities - photographs of the devastation but also all the objects and the space becomes a scene of waste rendered obsolete by natural catostrophy

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- When Polidori arrived in New Orleans on September 20, 80% of the city was still under water. The temperature was close to 90 F and the smell of rotting flesh and food was putrid. Downed electric cables draped the streets and sidewalks. Toppled live oaks lay like fallen colossi, except there was no grandeur to the scene, just despair. Most traffic lights and streetlamps had long stopped working, and exhausted relief crews were still discovering and collecting the dead.

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- It has long been my conviction that rooms are both metaphors and catalysts for states of being, and are thus an insight into the soul of their occupants. We may take a portrait of an individual, and indeed feel many emotions and imagine their personalities or histories in detail, but I believe that by photographing the interior of an abode we know much more about ones actual personality and personal values. The interior spaces that I photographed in New Orleans were still moist from the receding flood and indeed the stench of organic rot, the sagging carpets, and waterlogged floorboards made photographing difficult but it was nevertheless important to me to record for posterity a panorama of mementos of interrupted lives. It is also important to note that the overwhelming majority of these interiors occupants are still alive today, living a different life somewhere else. Together with the exteriors, in which I attempted to make visual sense of the forces of chaos that threw houses about as if they were made of cardboard, these photographic records are offered as a kind of visual last rites for life trajectories that are no more.

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-In the eleven days following the Chernobyl catastrophe on April 26, 1986, more than 116,000 people were permanently evacuated from the area surrounding the nuclear power plant -Declared unfit for human habitation, the zones of exclusion includes the towns of Pripyat and Chernobyl --In May 2001, Robert Polidori photographed what was left behind in this dead zone -images are haunting documents that present the reader with a rare view of not just a disastrous event, but of a place and the people who lived there -Variety of scenes: burned-out control room of Reactor 4, the unfinished apartment complexes, ransacked schools, and abandoned nurseries -Nearby, trucks and tanks used in the cleanup efforts rest in an auto graveyard, some covered in lead shrouds and others robbed of parts. Houseboats and barges rust in the contaminated waters of the Pripyat RiverFoliage grows over the sidewalks and hides the modest homes of the small town Chernobyl - captures the faded colors and desolate atmosphere of Pripyat and Chernobyl in his large-scale photographs

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