In times past, the French magazine Paris-Match’s official subtitle read: “the weight of words, the shock of images.” Climate changes have outstripped that message. Images and words now entwine in the demanding precision of information flows – a necessity given the complexity of the issues at hand. To be sure, many of the images in this exhibition are truly shocking. And this shock calls for a more in-depth reading of said images, matching the same depth we seek to convey through words. Some of these pictures are visual essays urging us to go beyond that first blow and turn to the details, the processes, and to ask why the enormity of the environmental aggressions is falling so unevenly over humans. One highlight emerges: the brink of catastrophe after the long, accumulated damage. Open mines and ravaging wildfires. Striking waste dumps and the tornados’ dramatic aftermaths. Persistent drought and floods. Unbreathable air and sea animals wrapped in plastic and crude oil. Ice melting and loss. The destruction, poverty, and suffering. Time now conflates the sudden disaster with the protracted destruction of the Environment. Ruin has become so overwhelmingly clear. Not even human blindness, ignorance and the greed of a deluded few can conceal the ruin anymore. This exhibition does have “the weight of words” and the “shock of images”. It echoes that urgent appeal that we all need to respond to. Amidst this remarkable selection, the images of Greta Thunberg and the youth of ‘Fridays for the Future’ climate movement speak directly to us. Through them, we are left with the feeling that there is still hope to change course. LUíSA SCHMIDT

I am an environmental photojournalist. I spend 70% of my time covering the intersection of man and nature. I wish it could be 100% of my time. I feel conventional photojournalism is well covered and this sector is not. A lot of my focus is on the small number of men and women who protect our natural heritage. These conservation rangers live spartan lives in isolated places, they’re poorly paid and are often in significant danger, yet we expect them to protect our natural world without any assistance from the rest of us. I’ve had the privilege of living with these groups on a number of occasions over the last 12 years and these are a few of the images I value from those times. It’s a hard and often thankless life for those men and women. I hope that some of my images help to pay tribute to them. Conservation today is a war of attrition, most of the time it is ill-equipped rangers versus heavily armed and protected poachers, organized crime, and corrupt politicians. I have photographed wars, famines, diseases, all the usual suspects in my business but it wasn’t until 2007, when I photographed 9 dead mountain gorillas in the Democratic Republic of Congo, that I actually felt useful. For the first time I realized the innate connection between the world of man and the world of nature and how conflict often blurs the lines between them. It’s all happening in the same space; we just don’t prioritize nature and that is to our detriment. We can see the consequences all around us if we only look. For me, personally, animals are like children, they are innocent; and they deserve our love, respect and above all, our protection. Ironically, we live in an age where the world is more connected than ever before. There is tremendous potential to arrive at a common value system for our planet and for all earth’s inhabitants. We already have too many people on this planet, and if we are to avoid inevitable and massive failure for our civilization, leadership will have to prioritize the environment as much as it does economics. They do not exist in isolation from each other. BRENT STIRTON

Documenting the fight to defeat ISIS in Iraq and Syria – 2016–2019. By mid-July 2017, it seemed incomprehensible that anyone could be left alive after weeks of clashes in Mosul’s Old City, the last major redoubt of the Islamic State in Iraq. Yet pockets of fanatical fighters continued to resist. At the same time — horribly and amazingly — civilians continued to emerge from the battle zone. At a forward base in the Maydan district of the Old City, special forces brought in a man holding a boy no older than 2. The barefoot man, wearing a bloodied vest and dirty shorts, didn’t know the child. The soldiers immediately suspected the man of using the boy as a human shield to emerge from the rubble, and took him aside. It was a surreal scene to watch, as the battle- hardened men, expert killers, put down their weapons and cared for the young, fragile boy. It was as if for a moment, this child made these men forget the lives they had taken and the friends they had lost over the past eight months. Or, maybe, he made them remember. I spent most of a year photographing the military campaign to reclaim Iraq’s second largest city, most often embedded with Iraqi special forces. I documented the fighting, of course, some of the most brutal urban combat since World War II. But I always felt my real function was to amplify the stories of the individuals whose lives were ones of relentless turmoil and tragedy. The frontline pictures dimensionalize the old cliché of being ‘caught in the crossfire,’ for both civilian and combatant. Then there are the images that capture the post-war reality: people returning to a devastated city to try to reclaim homes and lives amidst the abandoned corpses of Islamic State fighters; families still searching, months later, for missing loved ones. Hundreds of thousands had fled a battle that took the lives of thousands of civilians and left large swathes of the city in ruins. But the recapture of Mosul was a critical step in the downfall of the Islamic State. By October, the capital of its so-called caliphate, Raqqa, in Syria, had fallen as well. In the end, ISIS men were corralled into a tiny sliver of land along the banks of the Euphrates river in south east Syria, near the border with Iraq. The ‘final’ battle in early 2019 to rout them took months rather weeks because of the vast numbers of civilians, mainly their wives and children, that they were using as human shields. As the dragnet of Kurdish-led American backed forces closed in on the die-hard fighters who remained, tens of thousands of shell shocked, battered people streamed out of this tiny area. They are now languishing in lightly guarded detention camps in northern Syria still chanting ISIS slogans, declaring that ‘the State will rise again’. The fight to defeat ISIS and their poisonous ideology is far from over. IVOR PRICKETT

This series chronicles the ongoing anti-government protests in Hong Kong. For many Hong Kong demonstrators, identity is entwined with surveillance. Their signature masks, umbrellas and top-to- bottom black outfits shield them not only from physical threats like tear gas and rubber bullets, but also from the invisible dangers of personal identification and tracking by the state. In June 2019, massive protests erupted following an extradition bill that would have allowed Hong Kong residents to be sent to mainland China for trials. The former British colony returned to Chinese control in 1997 and though it maintained much of its autonomy under an arrangement known as “one country, two systems,” protesters say the Chinese government has been slowly stripping the city of its rights. After months of protests that disrupted public transportation and the city’s international airport, Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam agreed to suspend the extradition bill in September 2019. Still, demonstrations have not stopped but instead developed to include demands for full democracy and an inquiry into police action. Clashes between law enforcers and demonstrators have become increasingly violent, with riot police firing live bullets and protesters attacking officers and throwing petrol bombs. FELIPE DANA

This is about a love story between man, nature, and animals. The country’s inland regions have been going through continued de-population for many years now be this due to lack of interest in rural work or to the utopian pull toward large cities and the seemingly prosperous and vibrant lives they offer. The exodus to metropolitan regions has left a track of deserted villages, but also derelict houses and crops and pastures left to the wilderness and at the mercy of wildfires. Estranged from nature and land, today’s urban lifestyle of mass consumption and technology is not a compelling way to live anymore for many people. For some a better way is found in the quiet inlands where they are picking up the lost traditions of bygone generations and giving it new breath and meanings. Their dream is to live among nature and tend to her. To live in a more sustainable way in that the use of resources closes in a full circle. To make do with whatever the land offers – to eat, to build, to heal, and to meditate. Across Serra do Açor there are now an estimate 1,000 new inhabitants scattered across the region’s boroughs. Mostly foreig- ners but also some Portuguese have brought new life to these lands. At Benfeita, 35 new children cheer up the village once and long barren of life and energy. They are advocates of indigenous forest species and fight against eucalyptus mass plantations and monoculture, they have rebuilt the many homes wrecked by the 2017 fires, and they have lifted whole communities. A great many practise permacul- ture and some host volunteers keen to learn about it. Eventually, some end up buying plots and settle for a new life. The everyday hinges on time to live – to plant, to work, to rest and, more than anything, to relate. The newcomers have picked up on the ancient techniques combined with the resources at hand. For instance, using shale sto- ne as in the vernacular building types and resorting to wood stockpiled from the recent wildfires, or adding whatever the land gives. Some have goats and sheep. All the animals have a name. They have set up a new economy and a currency of their own – the ‘star’ –, two handcraft markets, a project of community learning, an association, and a store of second-hand clothes, among many other things. They come together to share common interests but they live autonomously with each family tending to their own project. Life is not always easy and the work in the uplands is often hard. But a strong will beats harshness. They unite around the common good and the love for nature. ANA BRíGIDA MARCH 2020

In the lead up to the football World Cup and the Olympic Games, the city of Rio de Janeiro – the Brazilian megalopolis and one of the most violent cities in the world – has been swept by a waging, constant war against drug traffickers. A high-risk “pacification” policy unfolds. ‘The government has let it go for thirty years. It did not pay attention to the poor, the favelas multiplied, and the traffickers ended up replacing the absent state’, as put by a major of the military police. So much so that in 2009 Rio held the record for the most dangerous city in the world, with more than 4,800 dead by bullets, stabs, axes, or machetes. More than half of the homicides are directly linked to drug trafficking. That same year, the police killed 1,188 people and counted 118 deaths in their ranks. The police militias, the “liga da justiça”, started to receive a premium for each trafficker killed – the ‘sheriff’ bonus. The drug traffickers saw the police as just another gang only with better arms. In that same year of 2009, during President Lula’s second term, the government launched a vast program to regain control of the hotspot areas: the favelas. Several special force teams of the military police are carrying out these ‘pacification’ operations in the favelas. The ‘cleansing’ accelerated in the lead up to the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games. However, out of the 1020 favelas listed, only around 30 are ‘pacified’. This means that the traffickers were either arrested or eliminated. There has been a preference for the latter option. PATRICK CHAUVEL

Central American migrants traveling to the United States is a longtime phenomenon. Over the past decade there has been a rise in the number of families and unaccompanied children crossing the US-Mexico border. Most of them are people fleeing extreme violence, insecurity and poverty, coming from the Northern Triangle of Central America — Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. However, they were put on the spotlight only in 2018 due to the massive caravans and the attention of US President Donald Trump. The extensive caravans born out of the necessity of making a safe crossing through Mexico‘s territory where migrants are exposed to all kinds of abuse by gangs, organized crime, smugglers and even authorities in a perilous journey to reach the United States border. Traveling out in the open in large group of people, where one can’t simply be grabbed or disappeared, gives them some assurance and protection to set out in their exodus. “The Caravan” documents the journey of thousands of Central American migrants traveling in large groups on the self-called caravans towards the United States, all in the hopes of a better life. The challenges they experience during their journey through Mexico, the difficulties faced once they reach the US-Mexico border and finally, the struggle and desperation to cross by any means the actual physical borders to pursue their American dream. AFP

Patriotic education, often with a military subtext, forms the mainspring of many youth programs in both Russia and the United States. In America, the dual messages of ‘America first’ and ‘Americanism’ can be found not only as a driving force behind political movements, but around the country in camps and clubs where young people are taught what it means to be an American. In Russia, patriotic clubs and camps are encouraged by the government. In 2015, President Vladimir Putin ordered the creation of a Russian students’ movement whose aim was to help form the characters of young people through instruction in ideology, religion and preparedness for war. The ‘Patriotic Education of Russian Citizens in 2016–2020’ program called for an 8 percent increase in patriotism among youth, and a 10 percent increase in recruits to the armed forces. Here in the U.S, in this microcosm of a changing nation, youth straddle the vulnerability of adolescence and simultaneous stripping of individuality. Beckon Us From Home is an ongoing photography project investigating how a nation instills patriotism and passes down traditions to new generations. The aim for this series is to open dialogue around the nuanced and complicated ideas instilled in future generations. How are young people responding to our contemporary society, with all of its changes in belief systems? SARAH BLESENER