How One Photographer Uses Instagram to Document #everydayclimatechange

Halfway through a two-month assignment photographing melting ice and polar life in Antarctica, James Whitlow Delano had to be evacuated. The World Health Organization had just declared COVID-19 a global pandemic, and borders were closing. Within hours, the Chilean government dispatched a C-130 Hercules to transport Delano, and the climatologists and marine biologists he’d been shadowing, over to Chile. Days later, Delano was sheltering in place in Japan, the American’s home of more than 20 years.

Anyone familiar with Delano’s work would not be surprised that he was busy documenting the effects of the climate crisis when the pandemic hit. He has spent most of his career chronicling environmental and human rights crises. In the late 1960s, Delano’s family moved from California to industrial New York. “Rivers caught fire at oil refineries, and wind carried fumes, shattering our Rockwellian pretensions,” he recalls. After taking on a project shooting the diminishing Bornean rainforest in 1994, the photographer dedicated his career largely to documenting the human relationship to nature, especially Indigenous communities’ loss of land over time.

The @everydayclimatechange Instagram feed showcases work from photographers spanning six continents, including Ed Kashi (@edkashi).

While exploring Malaysia’s Taman Negara National Park in 1994, he encountered a short man with thick, curly hair and skin much darker than that of the region’s Malaysians and Filipinos. Intrigued, Delano got to know the man, from whom he learned that the Indigenous Batek population descended from first-wave African migrants to Southeast Asia. He went on to build deep relationships within the park, where he spent decades collecting evidence of the impacts of regional deforestation and palm oil cultivation on the Batek culture.

Delano’s 2005 book, Empire: Impressions From China, chron­icling 10 years’ reportage on globalization’s effects on the everyday lives of Chinese citizens and the loss of their traditional heritage, was well received. But with the ensuing years’ rise of social networking platforms, he says, it became clear that reaching a wider audience required social media. “You don’t need seed capital to launch an Instagram movement—[it] connected me with people who became collaborators and eventually friends.”

The @everydayclimatechange Instagram feed showcases work from photographers spanning six continents, including Esther Horvath (@estherhorvath).

Scrolling through Instagram, Delano found particular inspiration in documentary photographer Peter DiCampo’s collaborative Everyday Africa project (@everydayafrica), launched in 2012, through which he shares daily snapshots of life across the continent, aiming to transcend stereotypes portrayed by the media. As the Everyday Projects brand expanded into various regions and themes, such as @everydayasia and @everydayextinction, Delano figured the moniker could help connect him with fellow social photographers.

The @everydayclimatechange Instagram feed showcases work from photographers spanning six continents, including Marcio Pimenta (@marpimenta).

In 2014, Delano happened to meet DiCampo in France, where Delano had traveled to show work on petroleum exploitation in the Amazon rainforest. With permission granted to join the loose-knit Everyday family, Delano reached out to photographers who’d collaborated on his 2008 book, The Mercy Project/Inochi, which he’d created to raise funds for hospice and palliative care following the untimely death of his sister, Jeanne. Those professionals recommended others; meanwhile, Delano combed Instagram for interesting artists to join his initiative. In 2015, Delano launched @everydayclimatechange.

Today, high-profile and lesser-known photographers spanning six continents share visual evidence of global warming with more than 143,000 followers. Highlights include Sean Gallagher’s burning fields in the Beng Per Wildlife Sanctuary in Cambodia and Georgina Goodwin’s documentation of human health, social issues, and climate impacts in Africa. Frequently, @everydayclimatechange features Instagram-feed takeovers wherein a single photographer posts photos for the week, because according to Delano, “you can’t tell a complex story in one photo.” 

This article appeared in the September/October 2020 edition with the headline "Climate Change Close-Ups."