Just a handful of plastic in a bird's stomach is enough to grasp the immensity of the plastic-in-the-sea problem. And to awaken our consciences. An interview with photographer Chris Jordan, director of the documentary Albatross.
To understand the consequences that plastic waste has on marine ecosystems, scientists decided to use the health of seabirds as an indicator. In doing so, they discovered that 9 out of 10 seabirds have plastic in their stomachs. Plastic has now reached every corner of the planet. 300 million tonnes of plastic become waste every year. Of these, 8 million tonnes end up in the sea. Given that even the first piece of plastic ever produced still exists, it is estimated that hundreds of millions of tonnes of plastic have already accumulated in the oceans. These figures, ever more precise and for that reason ever more alarming, make us realise the enormity of the problem we now face.
This fate seems to spare not even the places most difficult for humans to reach. The most remote island on the planet, located more than three thousand kilometres from any continent, has in fact become a symbol of our now unsustainable consumerist lifestyle and, consequently, of the disproportionate problem that is suffocating the oceans. This island is called Midway; it lies in the middle of the Pacific Ocean to the west of the Hawaiian archipelago and in the past was home to a United States naval and air base, now used by Nasa for emergency landings. Since 2006 it has been part of the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument.
American photographer Chris Jordan decided to visit the island several years ago and, once there, found himself immersed in the natural beauty of the place, marred by the plastic problem of which the island's only inhabitants — the albatrosses — are both witnesses and victims. After taking a series of photographs that have become iconic, he decided to return and make a documentary, entitled Albatross, to speak to people's consciences. To that end, on the occasion of World Oceans Day, celebrated on 8 June, his documentary was screened at the United Nations. We spoke with Chris Jordan about his experience, his work and his vision of possible solutions to this problem.
How did you realise that plastic was the battle you needed to fight?
I have been interested in mass consumption for more than twenty years — it was the first subject of my work. All my projects have always been tied to different aspects of this theme, whether the number of cars, computers or medicines we buy. And even today I look for different themes and problems that connect to the macro-theme of mass consumption. It was 2008 when I first heard about the issue of plastic in the oceans, and I was fascinated by it.
You visited Midway Island for the first time in 2009. Why did you decide to go there, and what did you see and experience?
A friend who had been to that place told me about the existence of a tragedy — incredible and powerful at the same time — that could be a metaphor for the world today. On Midway Island, a remote island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, there are tens of thousands of dead birds with bodies full of plastic. When I heard this, I realised that in my work I had always treated mass consumption as a global theme seen from a global perspective. So I wanted to look at the problem of plastic in the sea from a more personal point of view. All it took was discovering just a handful of plastic in one bird's stomach for me to no longer need to see all the other millions of tonnes surrounding it.
If almost all the world's seabirds have plastic in their stomachs, why did you decide to focus solely on albatrosses?
Midway was the first story I heard on the subject, and at that time there were not yet many scientific studies on plastic and birds. The fact that it was happening on such a remote island in the middle of the Pacific was also something truly symbolic and significant. If it had been an island three kilometres off the coast of New York with birds full of plastic, it would be a completely different thing. Moreover, among all the birds that could speak to us about the now broken relationship we have with the living world, it is the albatrosses that do so — birds that in poetry and literature have always been regarded as bearers of messages and among the most legendary of birds. This fascinated me, and from the very first time I was on the island I felt as though I were inside a poem, with all its layers of metaphor and symbolism.
Albatross was screened at the United Nations on the occasion of World Oceans Day. What do you expect will happen now?
I think the most interesting forms of activism we are witnessing at the moment are taking place within institutions, companies and organisations that support the cause. One example is Parley for the Oceans, which is working hard with companies to help them change their plastic-related business paradigms and, among other things, also took care of the United Nations Oceans Day programme. What they do is create a broad network of companies, individuals, governments and bodies of every kind to bring about deep change. I think that's an exciting thing.
On the other hand, do you think that we as individuals can truly make a difference in resolving the plastic crisis?
This is a topic that I believe belongs to the now broken paradigm of environmental activism. Much of environmentalism consists of people telling other people how to behave. And it's often small things like "take shorter showers." Even if the entire world population did this, it would change almost nothing. I think we need to move beyond the idea that each of us can save the world through small gestures, because we know that isn't entirely true. This means we should feel dissatisfied with the scale of these solutions. Solutions should be as large as the problems. One example is today's documentaries, which often show an enormous and disastrous global-scale catastrophe and then give a list of five things we can do — like inflating the car tyres before a journey to get more kilometres out of a tank of fuel, or not asking for a straw when we order a drink. All of this only diminishes the issue and is disempowering. I imagine we all know that as individuals we are less powerful than as a group. We have more power when we form groups, communities, nations. We need to make a shift in consciousness and remember to love the world and life. That is how we can begin to choose better leaders and start to make changes on the scale of the problems.
In your view, how is Albatross different from traditional documentaries?
There are several ways in which Albatross breaks the rules of traditional documentary filmmaking. Before I started making it, I spoke with some directors, because I'm not a director myself, so I didn't know where to begin. One thing almost all of them told me was about pace: a documentary needs to have a tight pace because people have a short attention span, so you have to get to the point and then move on. But that has never been my style. Imagine if I could take you with me to Midway Island. We would walk up to the nests of the young albatrosses, and we would crouch down nearby to watch them hatch. We would stay on our elbows until our backs ached, simply to admire their beauty. That is my philosophy for the entire film: to go slowly and show the beauty of the birds.
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Another aspect I thought about a great deal is that many documentaries have a kind of limitation in showing the world only in a scientific way and from an observation-based perspective. The way I experienced Midway Island was one of extreme beauty everywhere. Midway is a stunning island and albatrosses are incredible creatures. So I had to include that beauty in documenting the reality of the island. Being on an island with several million birds that have no fear of humans is like a paradise. But the fact that they are full of plastic makes it, at the same time, a kind of hell. What I wanted to do was bring all of these elements into the art form of the documentary. There is also very little narration, but a great deal of beautiful music. There are 19 tracks played in their full length. Albatross is an immersion in beauty, sadness and grief.
What kind of effect do you think your documentary will have on people?
My idea was to make the documentary a kind of guided meditation, almost like a ceremony. Often at the beginning of these rituals we find ourselves confronting our fears, confronting something frightening. And that is exactly how the documentary begins: by facing the horror of plastic. Starting with fear, we then move through it to open ourselves to curiosity and learning. There is a passage in which I talk about fear, because the birds have no fear of humans, and then it moves to a scene of curiosity in which the birds approach the camera and observe it in a beautiful way. When there is curiosity, we open ourselves to encountering others and we feel empathy. Curiosity and empathy are the beginning of a connection, of contact. And connection is the beginning of love. When we fall in love with the birds we also see that their stomachs are full of plastic, and so we begin to feel grief. This is the heart of the film: grief, and the understanding of that feeling. Grief, however, is not a negative feeling. It is different from despair. Grief is like a triangle: beauty, sadness and love, all mixed together. It is a vivid, intense feeling. It is the feeling of being alive, in a powerful and electrifying way. In that sense it is almost an ecstatic experience, one that connects you deeply to life.
There is a positive side to this story: since 2013, the albatross population on the island has grown by 500,000 individuals. Their species is not being driven to extinction by plastic. This does not diminish the value of their suffering, but it allows us to look at things from a different perspective. It is not like the elephants or the rhinoceroses in Africa that are being driven to extinction and where the only thing left to do is save them. There, you cannot speak in a poetic way or use their situation as a metaphor for the world. The only conversation to be had is about saving them. This is why we must look at the story of the albatrosses and see the reflection of our own culture.
The aim of Albatross is precisely this: to stir consciences. This is my wish, and I would like to spread Albatross as widely as possible, because it is a love story, a dedication to all the life that exists in the world, not just the albatrosses.