How photography connects and changes us

Ever since the first day I held a cam­era in my hand when I was eight years old, I have been drawn to explor­ing the many ways we can memo­ri­al­ize our time and space on this planet through pho­tog­ra­phy. Begin­ning with the early forms of image cap­ture and con­tin­u­ing through today’s dig­i­tal democ­ra­ti­za­tion pho­tog­ra­phy and the activ­ity of cap­tur­ing the world as we see pho­tog­ra­phy has held an almost mys­ti­cal pres­ence in our lives.

The shift to dig­i­tal meth­ods of cap­tur­ing our lives has moved pho­tog­ra­phy from the mys­ti­cal and mag­i­cal lim­ited to only a select few will­ing to mas­ter the mys­te­ri­ous rit­u­als of the dark­room to a tool of the peo­ple. The pro­lif­er­a­tion and ready avail­abil­ity of  sim­ple and small dig­i­tal cam­eras has given new mean­ing to the idea of cap­tur­ing life.

When I stum­bled on a series of TED talks by some of our most inter­est­ing and pro­lific pho­tog­ra­phers I thought it impor­tant to share their visions of our world. Those visions run from cap­tur­ing the geom­e­try of nature to cul­tures locked in time.

Jonathan Klein how images effect our lives

In this first pre­sen­ta­tion Jonathan Klein of Getty Images shows us  the power cer­tain images can become and how they can cap­ture the core of generations.

David Grif­fin Direc­tor of Pho­tog­ra­phy the National Geo­graphic

Using a back­drop of some of the most stun­ning images from National Geo­graphic archives Grif­fin talks about how pho­tographs con­nect us to our world and how they help us broaden our view of life.

Edward Bur­tyn­sky, large for­mat images of the land­scape of oil

One of the most pen­e­trat­ing uses of pho­tog­ra­phy is the act of using it as a mir­ror to reflect the effects of our pres­ence on our sur­round­ings. As a for­mer planer and urban designer I have used these tech­niques to illus­trate the need for change in the way we live. Burtynsky’s work fol­lows the impact of our petro­leum based lifestyle from well head to free way pre­sent­ing iconic images of our cur­rent era.

Wade Davis on endan­gered cultures

Davis a National Geo­graphic Explorer-in-Residence spends his time liv­ing among the indige­nous cul­tures of the world. Through his pho­tographs and films he shows us not only how these cul­tures live, but more impor­tantly how their high rate of dis­ap­pear­ance is effect­ing the mod­ern world.