If there is a photographer today that has earned the right to be compared to conservation photography icon Ansel Adams, it is Robert Glenn Ketchum. His 45-year career is filled with conservation activism and success and the charting of new artistic territories. Now, more than 20 years after their initial exhibition together, two of his earliest environmental portfolios will be shown side-by-side once again in Shifting Landscape, Shifting Vision, an exhibit at The G2 Gallery benefitting NRDC.
This upcoming exhibition will showcase Winters (1970-1980) and Order From Chaos (1979-1984), two collections that, together with photographs from Ansel Adams and landscape photography giant Eliot Porter, display the breadth and diversity of conservation photography. All three artists used their art as a tool for political change. Ketchum, however, went beyond the artistic singularity of Winters and Order From Chaos and became a significant spokesman for the environmental movement, as seen in his conservation-centered books, lobbying initiatives to Congress and active participation in the passing of the 1990 Tongass Timber Reform Bill. He was the recipient of the Outstanding Environmental Achievement Award from the United Nations, Robert O. Easton Award for Environmental Stewardship, and many other awards for his conservation efforts.
Shifting Landscape, Shifting Vision will run at the G2 Gallery in Venice from January 14 – March 2, 2014, with an opening reception on Saturday January 18 from 6:30-9 PM. Admission to the reception is $10, and all proceeds will be donated to NRDC.
G2 has held exhibitions benefitting NRDC in the past, and Ketchum has partnered with NRDC on numerous occasions, including a joint effort in the battle to protect the gray whale breeding and calving lagoon at Laguna San Ignacio in Baja California and in the ongoing fight against the massive Pebble Mine in southwest Alaska, in the headwaters of the world’s greatest remaining wild salmon fishery.