Photo Spotlight: Future of Seattle

Having strangers take your photograph is an intimate and often uncomfortable experience. Thus, when Sasha, Kleitia and I were walking through the streets of downtown Seattle clinging to five black and white posters, I was convinced that few people would be willing to participate.

Throughout the development of our project, our group continually struggled with the concern that the purpose and statement behind each photograph would compel people further into a state of paralysis rather than encourage them towards agency. Ultimately, our group decided that if we were to use the people of Seattle as not only our audience, but also as our subjects, that the project could draw upon the empathic qualities of society that Jeremy Rifkin in Empathic Civilization so strongly urges for.

In our decision to develop a photo spotlight, we were aware that we were not directly engaging individuals in the legislative and political process. Recognizing that legislative and civil action will ultimately be necessary to develop feasible and effective solutions to the emerging Anthropocene, we decided to focus our efforts on the emotional and empathic response that helps to inspire such political engagement. We hoped that our photographs showed the citizens of Seattle not only how they could help, but also who they could help. Additionally, the five of us devoted a large portion of our website to promoting organizations at the local and global level that individuals could get involved with, further attempting to encourage agency.

Although the purpose of the project was to ask Seattle locals to be the subject of our photographs in order to highlight the local implications of the Anthropocene, I was anxious that the posters we asked each individual to hold would be viewed as offensive. After all, we were asking individuals in their place of work to hold signs that directly insinuated that their source of income was at stake.

The people of Seattle were exceptionally receptive. A vast majority of the people were more than willing to participate. The conversations we held and the photographs we gathered served as a thoughtful reminder that an issue as all-encompassing and global as the Anthropocene can still be engaged with on the local level. While the concept of the Anthropocene may be intimidatingly large and abstract, citizens are still willing to engage with it, even when complete strangers ask them to be a part of the statement themselves.