WIDELY known for his famous portraits, Michel Comte stopped most of his commercial work over a decade ago to focus on an artistic practice engaged with environmental and social causes. As a war photographer, he worked with the International Red Cross as well as working in Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Sudan and Cambodia. A keen climber, Comte has been portraying glaciers around the world for the past 30 years. Recently he presented three major multimedia exhibitions connected to climate change, 2017 in Rome and Milano, followed by Beijing earlier this year.
Observing melting glaciers on a Wavelength climate expedition.
Photograph: Wavelength Foundation
Now he’s setting sail to the far north with environmental powerhouse Wavelength Foundation, joining co-founders Elsa Rodríguez and Oliver Krug (who is also an arts writer and contributor to Glass) in an adventurous journey. The newly created platform around a group of journalists, artists, scientists and activists has set up a crowd funding campaign for Comte’s ambitious Black Light project, a journey to the dark heart of climate change, culminating in a spectacular light installation in the arctic.
Observing melting glaciers on a Wavelength climate expedition.
Photograph: Wavelength Foundation
Comte is the first artist responding to the foundation’s call to the cultural sector to assume responsibility and leadership. “Time and apathy are the biggest challenges we face in the race against climate change; arts and culture possess an unique power to inspire and to shake up, to share ideas and to unite in a common cause,” explains Michel Comte.
Wavelength co-founders Elsa Rodríguez and Oliver Krug.
Photograph: Elsa Rodríguez and Oliver Krug
“Visual arts and culture are powerful tools to convey inconvenient truths: one of them is that we have not even begun to grasp the dimensions of the damage humans have made due to excess carbon output and greenhouse gases emission, and of the consequences that will haunt generations to come.” Wavelength Foundation was formed as a cultural catalyst, a platform and a movement to encourage the arts and culture communities to participate in a global campaign to raise awareness about one of today’s most urgent causes; the effects of climate change.
Glacier Lake 2017 (Detail). Photograph: Michel Comte
Photo print available on Kickstarter to support the campaign.
The foundation is calling upon artists, musicians, writers, thinkers, cultural, scientific and educational institutions to unite and form a new cross-disciplinary movement that will take on the enormous task of creating a culture of global awareness and change. With the next generation in mind, the foundation announced Wavelength Change Maker Scheme in support of forward thinking cultural-environmental initiatives that turn up the heat on politics, implement local and community activism, fund journalistic and academic investigation and especially encourage applications from artists and cultural practitioners under the age of 21 to form the next generation of environmental leaders.
A crowd-funding campaign runs on Kickstarter to help the cause, with rewards including original and signed photo prints by Michel Comte.
by Caroline Simpson
For more information about the Kickstarter campaign, please visit here