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Climate change under Trump's presidency

Climate change under Trump’s presidency

In Trump Revolution: Climate Crisis, the second in the Bronx Documentary Center’s series exploring the impact of the Presidency of Donald Trump, curators Michael Kamber and Cynthia Rivera bring together the work of photographers Stacy Kranitz, Kadir van Lohuizen, Yuri Kozyrev, Katie Orlinsky, Bryan Thomas, Marcus Yam in a harrowing exploration of the impact of White House policy on the environment. 

Alaska, Point Hope, whale hunting, May 2018 © Kadir van Lohuizen / NOOR for Fondation Carmignac

Trump, who has called climate change “a hoax,” selected noticed climate change skeptic Scott Pruitt to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, pulled out of the Paris Agreement, eliminated key protections for public lands, and rolled back landmark environmental legislation to the continued detriment of the people and the land. 

A Devastating Impact

Today, states from Alaska to Florida are living in the shadows of irreversible climate change, as the increasingly “warmest on record” temperatures are now literally reshaping the landscape. In Climate Crisis, photographers bear witness to the devastating impact of American policy on the nation’s most vulnerable populations. 

April 2017, Louisiana. The massive Exxon chemical plant is situated next to the ExxonMobil Refinery in the Standard Heights neighborhood of Baton Rouge © Stacy Kranitz

Guggenheim Fellow Stacey Kranitz documents life in “Cancer Alley,” a 150-mile pollution-ridden industrial corridor along the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. Here ExxonMobil. Koch, and Shell operate about 150 fossil fuel and petrochemical facilities under extremely lax environmental policies, that have resulted in extraordinarily high rates of cancer, respiratory disease, and other serious health ailments among the predominantly African-American communities in the region. 

In “Arctic: The New Frontier,” Carmignac Photojournalism Award winners Yuri Kozyrev and Kadir van Lohuizen record the melting of the polar sea ice caps, which results in the disastrous consequences of rising sea levels which Bryan Thomas documented along the Florida Coast in “The Sea of Darkness Calls” — revealing the inherent chain of events unfolding in real-time domino effect.

Esmeralda Garcia, Kali Cedeno, and Anthony Cedeno pose for a portrait in Destin, Florida. As humans continue to pollute the environment, our “sea level debt” grows © Bryan Thomas 2020

“How does life continue, let alone thrive, in an environment whose future has been so gravely foretold?” Thomas writes in his artist statement, “As long as humans have stood along the shore, staring toward the horizon, they have felt fear but, often, possibility. Now there is only fear. We no longer look across the ocean. We wait for it to come to us.”


Construction begins on the Auberge Beach Residences & Spa in Fort Lauderdale-by- the-Sea © Bryan Thomas 2020

In this Oct. 31, 2019, photo, smoke from the Maria Fire billows above Santa Paula, Calif. © Marcus Yam
After a successful hunt, Josiah Olemaun, a young whaling crew member takes a break from moving and stacking whale meat into his family’s ice cellar in Utqiagvik, Alaska © Katie Orlinsky
On a summer bird hunt, Kenyon Kassaiuli, Jonah Andy, Larry Charles, and Reese John cross a flooded walkway in Newtok, Alaska. May 27th, 2019 © Katie Orlinsky

Norilsk, Russia. August 2018 – The copper factory © Yuri Kozyrev / NOOR for Fondation Carmignac
A 16-year-old resident of Island View Drive wipes her tears, as she looks on at her family’s home destroyed by the Thomas fire, the morning after the fire started, in Ventura, Calif., on Dec. 5, 2017. © Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times

By Miss Rosen

Trump Revolution: Climate Change

Bronx Documentary Center is temporarily closed due to the COVID-19 outbreak; however, Trump Revolution: Climate Crisis can be seen online through June 30, 2020. 

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