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Waypoints in a Photographic Life


Although Gary Braasch is no longer with us, the images he created over forty years of photo- graphing both the natural and the human environments will not pass away, but continue to live on beyond him.


When he began his career in the 1970s as a nature photographer based in the Pacific North- west, nearby events both earthshaking and political—the eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980 (lower left) and the controversy over old growth forest protection necessary to the survival of the endangered spotted owl (lower center) that ensued during the same decade—led him to become one of the first and perhaps most exemplary of a new breed: environmental photojournalist. As such, his interests reached far beyond the natural environment to encompass the human world, and all the complex conflicts, compromises and even compatibilities that exist between the two: a house being destroyed by beach erosion on Cape Hatteras, N.C. in 2004 (far left); an idyllic scene of primordial natural beauty from coastal Oregon in 2005 (left), one of his personal favorites. By the end of the 1990s, Braasch had come to devote his entire professional career to covering the climate change story, which he reported with continuing images and text for the rest of his life on the web site: WorldViewofGlobalWarming.org. During a National Science Foundation media fellowship in Antarctica in 2000, he photographed the ice cave (background) that would become not only the symbol of his life’s work, but his trademark as well. A tiny human figure on the pe- riphery of the world reaching out tentatively to touch and understand a massive natural creation beyond. That was Gary Braasch.


— Roger Archibald, SEJournal photo editor


Background photo: © Gary Braasch, WorldViewofGlobalWarming.org


Photo: © Gary Braasch, WorldViewofGlobalWarming.org


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