INSPADES MAGAZINE DUE | Page 176

to the increasingly terrible news about the
projections of our future,” Roth elaborated,
“They were the first to hear the bad news,
and the pressure that they’re feeling in these
images is the pressure that we increasingly
feel as we encounter climate change in our
daily lives.” Inadvertently Sternfeld’s portraits
are in fact pictures of us, Roth observed.
“When we show photographs about social
subjects or political topics, we always wonder,
will this change anyone’s mind? Will people
be driven by what they see to actually go
out, protest, contact legislatures, or do any of
the other forms of political engagement that
actually make change?”
Roth voices the great question of how art
can make an impact, beyond the momentarily
charged response of a viewer. In a world where
attention is spread thin by infinite distractions
and stimuli, visual art may be a more relevant
medium for sparking change than ever.
“People are not necessarily reading very
difficult news articles about the future,” Roth
remarked; however, with an image-based
society that appeals to communicative outlets
like Instagram and Snapchat, visual arts can
impress viewers within seconds.
“Art is one of the ways that a subject can be
insinuated to the public mind, in a way that’s
less threatening and receptive to different

Joel Sternfeld, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate
Change: Eleventh Session of the Conference of the Parties to the Climate
Change Convention and First Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto
Protocol, Palais de Congres, Montreal, Canada, 28 November - 9
December, 2005 Robert Kofi Poamfo, Corporate Manager, Forestry
Commission, Ghana. From the series When It Changed. Digital
chromogenic print © Joel Sternfeld, courtesy of the artist and Luhring
Augustine, New York

Paola Pivi, Untitled (Zebras), 2003. Pigment print.
Photography by Hugo Glendinning. Courtesy of Galerie Perrotin

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