Unnatural Resources
Emek
Silkscreen, 2003
Los Angeles, CA
27833
Left: Bazaar
George Stowe Jr.
Sunset Marketing
Offset, 1970
Los Angeles, CA
19349
Right: War is Not Healthy for Children and Other Living Things
Lorraine Schneider
Another Mother for Peace
Offset, 1968
Beverly Hills, CA
27692
...In Every Grain of Sand There is a Story of the Earth - Rachel Carson
Harriet Sherry Smith
Woman's Building
Letterpress print, 1990
Los Angeles, CA
32027
Next Monday, April 22, is Earth Day. The above posters demonstrate the intersectional and diverse threats to our home that have only accelerated since each posters' creation.
Emek's 2003 poster, " Unnatural Resources," used Katsushika Hokusai's iconic " The Great Wave of Kanagawa" (1830) to draw attention to the massive wave of non-renewable resources and products humans have used in the past century that are polluting the Earth. In the ocean alone, there are large concentrations of macro- and micro-plastics that cause marine mammals to choke, starve, or experience injury. if the marine animals survive these experiences, the absorptions of these toxic chemicals make their way up the food chain, all the way to humans.
"Bazaar" highlights the issue of air pollution. Its subvertisement structure utilizes the haute couture fashion magazine Harper's Bazaar's image to satirically imagine a future where dangerous environments are simply adapted to rather than addresses. Air pollution is the fourth leading cause of death globally, responsible for 1 in 5 deaths.
"War is Not healthy for Children and Other Living Things (Primer)," one of the most famous anti-war posters ever made, was produced in response to the Viet Nam War. However, the poster inherently also points to war's effect on the environment: the destruction of local ecologies and loss of wildlife, the production of fossil fuel emissions in the endless thirst for oil, the pollution emitted by factories that manufacture war machines, and the erasure of knowledge held in peoples who care for their historic lands.
The Woman's Building's 1990 print celebrates Rachel Carson, esteemed environmentalist who "awoke the world to the threat that dangerous chemicals pose to all life," and jump-started the ecology movement we continue today. It reminds us that scientists and science communication workers like Carson are essential in advocating for the Earth's health. Without Carson and her successors, the Earth would likely be a much more inhospitable place than it is today.
This Earth Day, take time to enjoy this place we call home, and do your part to secure its (and our) future.
*Each of these posters will be for sale this weekend, 4/20 & 4/21, at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books at USC. We're booth # 845 in the Green Zone. More information below.
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