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Photography of abstract images allows us to go beyond a reality, explore other dimensions. In this case, in La Vanguardia Readers' Photos we approach with these snapshots the relationship between art and climate change or how artists have approached this now very current phenomenon.
The changes suffered by nature as a consequence of human action can be seen from the paintings that painters such as John Constable have left us, who dedicated himself to painting the landscapes of rural England that had not yet been affected by the industrial Revolution.
His technique of breaking down color into small strokes made him a precursor of Impressionism and he captured in his works studies of atmospheric phenomena, particularly clouds, in the first half of the 19th century. Nowadays, now in the 21st century, we also do not stop looking, curiously, at the sky, especially in this time of drought when it does not rain or not enough.
From the Industrial Revolution, which transformed landscapes with its steam engines and other new gadgets, we have reached the current technological and energy Revolution, with places transformed by wind turbines and with new ways of getting closer to nature, which have not passed unnoticed by contemporary artists.
One of them is the British John Akomfrah (Accra, Ghana, 1957), artist, filmmaker, writer and thinker, who has reflected in his work on climate change, a topic that has also inspired these photographs.
In Purple, Akomfrah proposed, at the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum in Madrid, "a reflection on climate change and the destruction capacity of human beings in nature, its effects and its consequences on biodiversity and on the communities that inhabit the planet".
Impressionism, post-impressionism and other contemporary isms and different forms of abstraction have captured the evolution of that entire landscape that has been transformed over the years and decades, always, by the action of human beings. Art thus becomes a faithful testimony of the evolution of our planet and a tool to reflect on it.
