Subhankar Banerjee News

“[Banerjee’s] exacting nature studies have made him a notable figure in the environmental movement. His three photographs here [Tufts University Art Gallery] are big in scale, in spirit, in impact. They’re magnificent, really. He concentrates on animal life: reindeer, migratory birds, caribou. The most striking image in a show full of striking images may be his photograph of caribou migrating in the snow. Seen from above, they look like ants atop sugar or cotton. This isn’t a bird’s–eye view. It’s a God’s–eye view. From that perspective, humans look no less insect–like. All are God’s creation, though only some have stewardship.”
—Mark Feeney, The Boston Globe, review of Seeing Glacial Time: Climate Change in the Arctic exhibition, 10 February 2014

“The most powerful work in the show is Banerjee’s large–scale color photographs. … An advocate for Arctic conservation and indigenous human rights, Banerjee holds masters degrees in both physics and computer science, which is somewhat ironic given that his work is the most aesthetically interesting. The e–publication that accompanies the exhibition includes extensive notes by the photographer that informatively and thoughtfully address the effects of climate change in the regions he covers.”
—Dr. Michelle Lamunière, caa.reviews, College Art Association, review of Seeing Glacial Time exhibition, 22 October 2014

“Irresponsible & Reckless”: Environmentalists Decry Obama’s Approval for Shell Drilling in Arctic
Subhankar Banerjee in conversation with Amy Goodman and Narmeen Shaikh
Democracy Now!, New York, 14 May 2015

You may also like to view two other related interviews Amy Goodman and Narmeen Shaikh hosted that same day.

Seattle Mobilizes to Shut Down Shell Operations to Protest Arctic Oil Drilling: Zarna Joshi

30 Million Gallons Under the Sea: Five Years After BP Disaster, New Drilling OK’d by Spill Site: Antonia Juhasz

To Drill or Not to Drill, That Is the Question
The Obama Administration, Shell, and the Fate of the Arctic Ocean
by Subhankar Banerjee, with introduction by Tom Engelhard
TomDispatch.com of The Nation Institute, New York, 3 March 2015

Here’s a Jeopardy!–style question for you: “Eight different species of whales can be seen in these two American seas.” Unless you’re an Iñupiaq, a marine biologist, or an Arctic enthusiast like me, it’s a pretty good guess that you can’t tell me what those seas are or what those whales are either. The answer: the Chukchi Sea and the adjacent Beaufort Sea, off Arctic Alaska, and you can commonly spot bowhead, beluga, and grey whales there, while fin whales, minkes, humpbacks, killer whales, and narwhals are all venturing into these seas ever more often as the Arctic and its waters continue to warm rapidly. The problem, however, is that the major oil company Royal Dutch Shell wants to drill in the Chukchi Sea this summer and that could, in the long term, spell doom for one of the last great, relatively untouched oceanic environments on the planet. Let me explain why Shell’s drilling ambitions are so dangerous.
READ THE ARTICLE ON TOMDISPATCH.COM

On 23 January 2015, the Nottingham Contemporary in the United Kingdom opened a major exhibition, RIGHTS OF NATURE: ART AND ECOLOGY IN THE AMERICAS. The exhibition is curated by Dr. TJ Demos and Dr. Alex Farquharson, with Irene Aristizábal. The Guardian art critic Jonathan Jones selected Rights of Nature as the EXHIBITION OF THE WEEK in the UK. Eight of my photographs of Arctic Alaska from the permanent collection of Lannan Foundation are included in the exhibition. On 24 January, the Nottingham Contemporary presented an international conference, RIGHTS OF NATURE. Throughout the day there were many wonderful talks and spirited conversations. TJ Demos gave an expansive and critical overview; I spoke about the Arctic, while Brian Holmes took us to Argentina; Eriel Tchekwie Deranger of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation told us about the devastation from tar sands extraction adjacent to her homeland in Alberta; Ursula Biemann took us to Ecuador, Elizabeth Peredo to Bolivia, Fernando Palma Rodríguez to Mexico, and Mabe Bethônico to Brazil—are just a few examples. You can view the entire conference on YouTube on two separate sessions [MORNING SESSION | AFTERNOON SESSION]. My talk, “Rights of Nature—Says Who?” starts at 2:15:01 and ends at 2:40:39 of the morning session. I begin with a rift and end with a mend.

On 30 January 2014, Shell announced that the company has shelved its plan to drill in the Alaskan Arctic in 2014. The Inupiat community, in partnership with environmental organizations, had filed a lawsuit against the US Department of Interior, for not properly evaluating the environmental impacts of drilling in the Arctic Ocean. The US Court of Appeals of the Ninth Circuit agreed; handed us a victory, following which Shell shelved its 2014 drilling plan. READ THE ARCTICLE ON COMMON DREAMS

For more information on the campaign to stop Shell’s Arctic drilling, see my essay “BPing the Arctic?” (READ ONLINE ) in the paperback edition of the anthology, Arctic Voices: Resistance at the Tipping Point (Seven Stories Press, 2013); my letter to the editor “Can Shell Be Stopped?” (READ ONLINE ) in The New York Review of Books (6 June 2013); and my interview “Looming Deadline Creates Window for Protests to Stop Shell’s Arctic Drilling” (VIEW ONLINE ) with Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez on Democracy Now! (20 July 2012).

Arctic Voices: Resistance at the Tipping Point
Edited by Subhankar Banerjee
Seven Stories Press, New York, hardcover 3 July 2012, updated pbk 22 October 2013

Read my introduction, “From Kolkata to Kaktovik”, in Arctic Voices (READ ONLINE )

“In Arctic Voices, long–term issues of global importance—the exploitation of wild places for fossil fuels, and whether we’re determined to ride our energy binge to the grim end—are made immediate and vivid … One of the great strengths of Arctic Voices is that it shows how Alaska and the Arctic are tied to the places where most of us live. … In this impassioned book, Banerjee shows a situation so serious that it has created a movement, where “voices of resistance are gathering, are getting louder and louder.” May his heartfelt efforts magnify them.”—Ian Frazier, The New York Review of Books

“Part of our failure to recognise the dangers at stake is that the Arctic still tends to be perceived as a big barren desert of ice, apolitical and disconnected from our political concerns, up for grabs. The book Arctic Voices: Resistance at the Tipping Point offers an encyclopedic approach to reframe such understandings.”—Manuela Picq, Al Jazeera

“The volume’s most outstanding feature is that it shows the Arctic not as a sublime wilderness devoid of human beings, but as a region in which people have been living for a long time, and in which contemporary developments threaten not only nature, but in a great measure also indigenous cultures. … Through making both victimisation and resistance visible, Arctic Voices is itself an important contribution to the struggle for environmental justice in the far North.”—Reinhard Hennig, Ecozon@: European Journal of Literature, Culture and Environment

The following books include discussions of my work.

Decolonizing Nature: Contemporary Art in the Age of Climate Change
by TJ Demos
Sternberg Press, Berlin, Fall 2015
The book includes an in–depth discussion of my Arctic photography and visual activism.

A Companion to American Art
by John Davis (Editor), Jennifer A. Greenhill (Editor), Jason D. LaFountain (Editor)
Wiley-Blackwell, 13 July 2015
The book includes an essay, “From Nature to Ecology: The Emergence of Ecocritical Art History,” by Alan Braddock, in which he includes a discussion of my work.

Critical Landscapes: Art, Space, Politics
by Emily Eliza Scott (Editor), Kirsten Swenson (Editor)
University of California Press, Berkeley, 26 May 2015
The book includes an essay, “Documenting Accumulation by Dispossesion,” by Ashley Dawson, in which he includes a discussion of my work.

Art and Politics Now
by Anthony Downey
Thames and Hudson, London, 21 October 2014
“Artist, educator and activist Subhankar Banerjee’s project Land–as–Home (2000–) consists of two large–scale series, Arctic and Desert. Both are concerned with a number of interconnected issues, not least the shelter and food that the earth affords its inhabitants and how these basic elements of life are under threat from industrialized societies. … In Gwich’in and the Caribou (2007), we see two members of the Gwich’in community skinning caribou, an image that reflects on the broader issue of their struggle to save the calving ground of the caribou from oil and gas development.”—Andrew Downey, excerpted from Art and Politics Now

Undermining: A Wild Ride Through Land Use, Politics, and Art in the Changing West
by Lucy R. Lippard
New Press, New York, 15 April 2014
“The photographers represented in this book are among those who are deeply aware of the meanings embedded in their images, even when they are not obvious. Some, like Subhankar Banerjee, known for his stunning images of the Arctic and his eloquent advocacy on its behalf, declare themselves activists first and artists second. … Many are not challenging their medium in art world terms, because individual style may not be their primary concern; in fact, it can be difficult to distinguish their works. Yet there is a fundamental disjunction: when even the most critical photographs are exhibited, they become art objects. Their activism is in danger of being diminished by context.”—Lucy R. Lippard, excerpted from Undermining

In the Warming Arctic Seas
by Subhankar Banerjee
World Policy Journal, published by the World Policy Institute, New York, June 2015

READ THE PRINT VERSION (PDF) | READ THE ONLINE VERSION AT THE WPI WEBSITE

When land and sea are going through rapid changes, inhabitants of the area are usually the first to witness it. In 2002, the Arctic Research Consortium of the United States, in cooperation with the Arctic Studies Center of the Smithsonian Institution, pointed out that the indigenous peoples “are already witnessing disturbing and severe climatic and ecological changes,” even though “the majority of the Earth’s citizens have not seen any significant climate changes thus far.” Thirteen years later, a majority of the world’s people are experiencing significant impacts of climate change. In the Arctic, the changes have only accelerated.

The Environmental Dance
by Subhankar Banerjee
in Social Text journal Periscope dossier Radical Materialism, March 2015
Edited by Ashley Dawson and Emily Eliza Scott
THE RADICAL MATERIALISM DOSSIER | THE ENVIRONMENTAL DANCE ESSAY | AN EXCHANGE WITH DAVID ABRAM

Routledge Handbook of Religion and Ecology
I’m writing the Art chapter in the Environmental Humanities section of the anthology, Routledge Handbook of Religion and Ecology. Edited by Mary Evelyn Tucker, John Grim, and Willis Jenkins (Routledge, 2016 ).

Emergent Possibilities for Global Sustainability: Intersections of Race, Class and Gender, Vol. II
I’m writing an essay “Long Environmentalism: An Interpretive Study of Collaborative Engagements” that will appear in the anthology provisionally titled, Emergent Possibilities for Global Sustainability: Intersections of Race, Class and Gender, Vol. II. Edited by Phoebe C. Godfrey and Denise Torres (Routledge). This essay is based on a keynote lecture, “LONG ENVIRONMENTALISM,” I gave at the 27th Annual Meeting of the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts, PostNatural, at the University of Notre Dame in 2013.

Ecocriticism and Indigenous Studies: Conversations from Earth to Cosmos
I’m writing an essay “Bearing Witness: Seeing the Far North Anew” that will appear in the anthology, From Earth to Cosmos: Indigenous Eco–Perspectives of Resistance, Resilience, and Multi–Species Relations. Edited by Joni Adamson and Salma Monani (Routledge, 2016).

The Varieties of Environmental Violence
by Subhankar Banerjee, Los Angeles Review of Books, 22 November 2013

This essay is a review of Rob Nixon’s book, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor (Harvard University Press, 2011, paperback 2013)

READ THE ESSAY ONLINE

“Slow Violence is an important contribution to the growing field of ecocriticism… Nixon further broadens the scope of ecocriticism by bringing postcolonial studies to the table… Slow Violence is the first book in environmental literary studies to explore the connection between natural resource extraction and petro–imperialism… Slow Violence eschews dense prose and indecipherable academic jargon for the rigorous, clear writing of someone with the mind of a critic and the heart of a humanist. From now on, thanks to this book, no discussion on environmentalism would be complete without taking slow violence into account”.

Ought We Not to Establish ‘Access to Food’ As a Species Right?
by Subhankar Banerjee
in Third Text special issue Contemporary Art and the Politics of Ecology
Volume 27, Issue 1, January 2013, Routledge, London
Edited by T. J. Demos

READ THE ESSAY ONLINE

“The Gwich’in do not inhabit the coastal plain, they do not go there to hunt, they do not even walk there, and yet they are making a claim for its protection. For all these reasons, I would call this a right–to–food claim; by making this claim they are fighting to protect access to food for human and non–human communities—caribou for the Gwich’in, and cotton grass for the caribou, during calving time”.

Photography’s Silence of (Non)Human Communities
by Subhankar Banerjee
in all our relations, the 18th Biennale of Sydney catalogue (Biennale of Sydney, 2012)
Edited by Catherine de Zegher and Gerald McMaster

READ THE ESSAY ONLINE

“I think photography is a kin of philosophy—both help us raise questions about ‘our time’. In that regard, photography can never be dead, as any time is different than what came before. In the climate ravaged Anthropocene era that we have entered, photography has an immense potential to help us raise new questions about the survival of all species”.

Of Survival: Climate Change and Uncanny Landscape in the Photography of Subhankar Banerjee
by Yates McKee
in Impasses of the Post–Global: Theory in the Era of Climate Change, Vol. 2 (Open Humanities Press, 2012)
Edited by Henry Sussman

READ THE ESSAY ONLINE

“Banerjee is concerned with…a relay between media and survival [as Judith Butler writes in, Frames of War: When is Life Grievable?], which he stages in terms of the specific formal and historical problems pertaining to photography as a medium. The images exemplify [Eduardo] Cadava’s axiom that ‘there can be no image that is not about destruction and survival, and this is especially the case in the image of ruin’ … Banerjee’s images are ‘images of ruin’ … The uncanniness of landscape identified by [Jean–Luc] Nancy…is exacerbated by Banerjee throughout his oeuvre… Marked by traces, trails, and vestiges of a global ecological history…Banerjee’s uncanny landscapes speak to a project of climate justice… To paraphrase Walter Benjamin’s remark on Eugene Atget—Banerjee photographs every single inch of the Arctic as if it were the scene of a crime”.

Photography Changes Our Awareness of Global Issues and Responsibilities
by Subhankar Banerjee
in Photography Changes Everything, (co-published by Aperture and the Smithsonian Institution, 2012)
Edited by Marvin Heiferman

BOOK LINK

“Perhaps in both of these motifs—land–as–scenery and man–altered–landscape—photography has moved too quickly from scenery to destruction, without paying enough attention to the complex relationships and the lived experiences inhabitants have with a land. Perhaps this is inevitable, because American land conservation, from its inception, has tended to separate man from nature, and the medium of photography only reinforces such a philosophy. … Perhaps at no time in the history of humankind has our planet’s ecological fabric been this degraded and life on earth so threatened. … Edward Steichen…once said, The mission of photography is to explain man to man and each man to himself. This is a tall order, but I think photography must also play a critical role in establishing our relationship to the environment and all other species with whom we share this planet.”

Reframing the Last Frontier: Subhankar Banerjee and the Visual Politics of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
by Finis Dunaway
in A Keener Perception: Ecocritical Studies in American Art History, (University of Alabama Press, 2009)
Edited by Alan Braddock and Christoph Irmscher

BOOK LINK

“By the time Senator Boxer displayed one of his polar bear pictures, Banerjee had moved beyond the dueling frontier visions that have tended to frame the debate over oil drilling. Perhaps he had realized as well that these visions ultimately reinforce one another, as they both portray ANWR [Arctic National Wildlife Refuge] as a remote place, disconnected from everyday life. Banerjee’s striking aesthetic compositions, together with his attention to ecological context, reframe the Arctic landscape and question some of the reigning assumptions about the relationship between nature and culture in modern America. His work makes viewers feel closer to the Arctic, not only by offering memorable portrayals of the region, but also by repeatedly reminding them of the ties that bind this distant land to their own lives.”

[group] Rights of Nature: Art and Ecology in the Americas
Curators Dr. T. J. Demos and Dr. Alex Farquharson, with Irene Aristizábal
Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham, United Kingdom, 23 January – 15 March 2015
The Guardian art critic Jonathan Jones selected Rights of Nature as the EXHIBITION OF THE WEEK.
See also the interview the WORM magazine did with curator TJ Demos.

[group] Desert Serenade: Drones, Fences, Cacti, Test Sites, Craters and Serapes
Curator Christie M. Davis
Lannan Foundation Art Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 12 July – 31 August, 2014

[group] Vanishing Ice: Alpine and Polar Landscapes in Art, 1775–2012
Curator Dr. Barbara C. Matilsky
Whatcom Museum, Bellingham, Washington, 2 November 2013–2 March 2014
Tour schedule: El Paso Museum of Art, El Paso, Texas, 1 June - 24 August 2014
McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Ontario, Canada, 11 October 2014 - 11 January 2015
The 144–page EXHIBITION CATALOGUE is published by Whatcom Museum and distributed by the University of Washington Press

[group] Seeing Glacial Time: Climate Change in the Arctic
Curator Dr. Amy Ingrid Schlegel
Tufts University Art Gallery, 30 January–18 May 2014
The exhibition is accompanied by an E-BOOK.
Art Review: Mark Feeney, “At Tufts, going far north to look at climate change”, The Boston Globe, 10 February 2014

[group] In Residence: Contemporary Artists at Dartmouth
Curators Dr. Michael Taylor and Gerald Auten
Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College, 18 January–6 July 2014
The 160–page EXHIBITION CATALOGUE is published by the Hood Museum of Art and distributed by the University Press of New England

LECTURES

Conflict Shorelines—Conference
Princeto