This year, like other years before it, has been quite unlike any year before it.
Devil’s Gulch, kunanyi. 2021, Pentax MX, Portra 800.
With each revolution we take around the sun on this home planet of ours, certain events take place which are unprecedented, unique and irreversible.
It’s fascinating how something as small as a virus, which seemed to appear out of nowhere, has taken control of our lives so entirely. We are living through a time of a mass extinction, catastrophic climate change, impending societal collapse and the thing that brings our world to a halt is a little ball with sticky tentacles.
I guess it makes sense. Being able to extract oxygen out of the air is our number one priority as a breathing, sentient organism. Covid has hit us where it hurts us most. It affects our ability to breathe and so it has had a severe effect on our way of life. In a way Covid has taught us something really important. It appears that we really value our ability to breathe.
The trouble is, for as long as we continue to view ourselves as separate from the natural world which we are destroying, we will not find a lasting solution to our inability to breathe properly. Our own health is intricately tied up to the state of our planet’s health.
Ring of light. 2021, Pentax MX, 50mm, Kodak Pro 100.
I feel that that coronavirus is the physical manifestation of a sense of hopelessness at being unable to stop the governing forces from destroying so much we value. We have created a power structure that is wiping out life on earth at an accelerating rate. It’s disguised as progress, as a march toward prosperity, for the sake of country, god, wealth, economy. The sacrifices by the side of the road have been tradition, culture, language and diversity. To mourn these losses equates to being labelled in our society as depressed, as ill, as a pathological anomaly. Yet, when we acknowledge our sorrow at the state of the world, and the direction where it’s going, we are only being truthful, human.
Cape Portland, 2021. Pentax MX, 50mm, Portra 160.
The thing is, we can turn the tide. If we can manufacture and consume two billion face masks a day, we can also dream of clean air and drinking water. We can also imagine a world where the values driving our society aren’t towards wealth, but towards health, not just for humanity, but for all living systems that support our existence.
Timmy K swimming the channel. 2021, Pentax MX, 50mm.
Apathy is a slow form of suicide. Turning away, ignoring is as good as being complicit. If things are to change, we need to change them. We can’t continue to ignore the fundamental issues that are causing our illness and expect we will somehow get better simply through being injected with vaccines or by swallowing pills. Becoming healthy can’t be achieved through fighting illness, just like peace can’t be achieved by fighting terrorists. To be healthy, we need to embrace healthy habits. Eat well, sleep well, live well. Foster community and collective cooperation. Acknowledge the interconnectedness of life. We already know what it is we need to do. We just need to do it.
Jingle and Pringle, stray kittens we found by the side of the road. 2021, Pentax MX. Portra 160.
If there is one thing I lament about the year that’s been is that it seems to have driven people further apart from each other. The measures brought in to control the pandemic have been successful at more than containing the spread of the virus. It has also brought alienation, suspicion and fear into the mainstream. We can’t embrace each other without uncertainty, we can’t shake hands without fearing judgement, we can no longer see our loved ones without a worry of making them sick. This kind of mindset is debilitating.
Rainbow Valley. 2021, Pentax MX, 50mm, Portra 160.
The media has created yet again a landscape that depicts the world as a battlefield, where there is clearly good and bad, safe and unsafe. Those who get the vaccine are doing their civic duty and are ‘safe’, whereas those who don’t are a risk to the rest of us and are labelled ‘unsafe’. This is the story we are told, in a forceful way. Soon, those who are not vaccinated won’t be able to travel, shop, live as fully participating members of society. To continue existing in this pandemic, we must make a choice. Either embrace the common concept of what it means to stay healthy, and get the jab, over and over again, or become socially exiled.
“I am the Lorax and I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues, and I’m begging you sir, at the top of my lungs, what on Earth have you done to my myrtle beech trees?”
Our obsession with safety is going to be our downfall. We can’t make this world safe, no matter how much we’d like it to be so. People will continue to die, despite our best efforts. We can use the best technology available to us, but if we create a socially divisive cultural landscape, new and deadly forms of illnesses will continue to arise. We can’t contain the spread of a virus any more than we can contain the spread of greed and obsession with power. Perhaps we can, to a point, but then it will break free and spread. And this is exactly what we are seeing.
Burnt pencil pines, Central Plateau. 2021, Pentax MX, 50mm, Ektar 100.
The outbreak we are seeing in Australia is perhaps less severe than it would have been if it happened before the majority of people became vaccinated… but what has been the cost? What has been the cultural and societal costs of the measures that have been brought into effect? We clearly don’t know, cannot know. But time will tell, as it always does.
Fog on the lake. 2021, Pentax MX, 50mm, Portra 800.
It’s easy to look back on 2021 and label it as a new ‘worst year ever’. If you do, I dare say you probably haven’t experienced war, or survived a famine, or had the bubonic plague. Neither have I, and I am grateful for that. All I’m saying is that humanity has endured some pretty dark times in the past, and that dealing with Covid probably hasn’t been the worst of it.
Fishing boat near Bicheno. 2021, Pentax MX, 50mm, Portra 800.
I’d like to take a look back on 2021 not in terms of all the things I didn’t get to do, but in terms of the things that I did get to do. It’s easy to lament the state of the world, to feel wronged, to feel injustice at having our plans foiled. But if we can’t feel gratitude for the world exactly as it is, we will never find happiness, no matter where we seek it.
Symmetry, my photographic theme for the year 2021. Pentax MX, 50mm, Kodak Pro 100. BW edit.