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Friday, August 30, 2019

Weekly Post, FISHFARMS: Forming My World View through Aquaculture in 1977 by Robert Glenn Ketchum

FISHFARMS:  Forming My World View through Aquaculture in 1977
by Robert Glenn Ketchum



In 1977, I was commissioned by Elisabeth Mann Borgese to help do research, interviews, and take photographs for a book she was writing about worldwide aquaculture. It would be published by Harry N. Abrams, one of the world’s premier publishing houses, famous for their beautiful books. It would also involve around-the-world travel to 8 countries, and some of the most remarkable places I would ever visit. SEAFARM: The Story of Aquaculture was a very successful publication featuring over 100 of my images, and an exhibit I assembled with support from Nikon, became a Smithsonian traveling exhibition for 6-yrs., viewed by over 6-million people.  ~Robert Glenn Ketchum




Friday, August 30, 2019

FISHFARMS:  Forming My World View through Aquaculture in 1977, #71:
Fish Farms #71:  As Elisabeth, our host/guides, and I, begin our return to Bangkok, we intend to do in one day downriver, what took several days as we came upriver. This run starts early in the day, and it is actually very nice to be out on the Chao Phraya in the cool air of the morning. Also, we are traveling at a greater speed heading back, because we are not “sight-seeing” any longer. Although I try not to spend too much film on things unrelated to our aquaculture research, there are no further pictures to be offered regarding fish, so I enjoy just observing the diverse river life, as we pass quickly by. Like most things you experience for a second time, I begin notice further conditions of life around the river, that I did not see when we first passed through. Most of these families along the shore, live OVER the water, and do not possess actual land. It makes them extremely vulnerable to flooding, and it exposes them to pollution in the water, that grows more apparent the closer we get to Bangkok. In the above image, the clothes being hung up to dry have just been washed in the river, and the women hanging them up, also bathed in it.

photograph(s) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2019, @RbtGlennKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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Thursday, August 22, 2019

Weekly Post, "My NEA Funded Artist-in-Residence at the University of Wisconsin" by Robert Glenn Ketchum

My NEA Funded Artist-in-Residence at the University of Wisconsin
by Robert Glenn Ketchum



In 1988, I was awarded an Artist-in-Residency at the University of Wisconsin-Waukesha, funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Wisconsin Arts Board. This was a small body of work created over three years, and eventually exhibited once at the university. Some images have been printed, but most have never been seen. I hope you enjoy these photographs. I think they are among some of the most beautiful I have ever taken.  ~Robert Glenn Ketchum




Thursday, August 22, 2019

University of Wisconsin: Artist In Residence, #43:
Wisconsin #43:  In the last post, I have worked my way to the creek that crosses the UWisconsin field station property to see last light on a clear fall day. I have visited this location many times during the multiple visits of my Artist-in-Residence, and I have made some of my best images in this particular part of the habitat (posts #7, #10, #23, #24). This evening I have bush-wacked to any area of large, overhanging trees, and as you can see (last post), the sun is behind the leaves, and the creek is barely visible. I am up a small embankment, so I thought to change my POV, I would go down next to the creek, walk under the tree branches, and shoot the the leaves illuminated in the opposite direction. “An Ecstasy of Contrasts” is one of my favorite of all of those images I made during my residency, and it has been one of my best selling prints. I thought it a great closing post for this blog. I would like to thank Marlin Johnson for getting me involved with this project, and being my congenial host and advisor while I “worked in the fields.” I would also like to thank the University of Wisconsin-Waukhesha and the NEA for providing the support for my Artist-in-Residence. I hope many have enjoyed the rich beauty of the Kettle Moraine (and all of its weeds - LOL), that I have tried to interpret here.

photograph(s) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2019, @RbtGlennKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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NRDC: Pebble Mine Environmental Review Falls Flat by Joel Reynolds

Pebble Mine Environmental Review Falls Flat






August 21, 2019
by Joel Reynolds, Western Director, Senior Attorney, Marine Mammals, Oceans Division, Nature Program
NRDC, Natural Resources Defense Council

Pebble CEO’s enthusiastic spin fails to mask widespread criticism of data gaps, unsupported conclusions, and failure to meet industry standard practice.

When Tom Collier talks, it’s sensible to be skeptical.

Monday, July 22, 2019

Weekly Post: High and Wild: Three Years of Wandering in the Wind Rivers (#1-100)

Continued... Wind Rivers #1-100

High and Wild: Three Years of Wandering in the Wind Rivers
by Robert Glenn Ketchum



After receiving my MFA from CalArts, I was invited by Bill Lund, Sharon Disney’s husband, to come stay at the families' Diamond-D Ranch in Dubois, Wyoming. Bill thought I might like to photograph in the nearby Wind River Mountains, which I did, backpacking through them extensively over the next three summers. Welcome to a world of big granite walls and huge alpine lakes!
~Robert Glenn Ketchum


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Due to the size and quality of the photos included in this blog, and as too many photos tend to slow a blog down, we have opted to host these previous entries on a separate blog post in order to best optimize your reading experience.  Enjoy!

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Monday, July 22, 2019

High and Wild:  Three Years of Wandering in the Wind Rivers, #100:
Wind River, #100:  Vicki Golden and I succeed in our off-trail traverse between the Titcomb Lakes Basin and Wall Lake, and set up a great camp at the far end of Wall Lake, a place we know from a previous camping trip. The hike was very leisurely, and not very difficult, so after a good meal and some sleep, we arise early to another cool day with non-threatening weather passing over us. The last time we camped here, we explored the far end of the basin, back into the Pole Creek headwaters, so I suggest that today we go to other end of the lake, where we will overlook the Cook Lakes, and have a broad view, west and south. As we have also camped at the Cook Lakes previously, I want to study the topo maps and the terrain to see if there is some other place we can explore within a reasonable hiking distance. It is a BEAUTIFUL day with a light breeze, so our morning hike is another gift of late summer. When we near the outlet end of Wall, I lead a rising traverse of the dome that slopes above us from the trail, and after about an hour of gradual climbing through meadows and granite terraces, Vicki and I emerge on a bald rise surrounded by flowers, and offering an expansive 360˙ view. Obviously, this is our lunch spot. We eat while perusing our maps, and from our elevation, we can see that south of us, as Pole Creek and the Cook Lakes descend, there is a summit called Mt. Baldy that rises. More of interest to us, Baldy has a huge basin on this side that is filled with lakes. We decide that will be our destination tomorrow, so we finish lunch and start back to camp. Before we descend to the lake trail, I make this 2-image shot of the entire Wall Lake Basin, and as I/we have never returned, it is a great parting gift to me and my library. This is a high, wild world I got to enjoy for an extended period.
photograph(s) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2019, @RbtGlennKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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Thursday, July 11, 2019

Weekly Post, ARCTIC: At the Cutting Edge of Climate Change (#1-100)

Wednesday, July 11, 2018


ARCTIC:  At the Cutting Edge of Climate Change, #100:
ARCTIC, #100:  Sitting in one place for several days because “Itasca” is ice-bound makes everyone (especially Bill Simon) a little stir-crazy. With the long daylight hours making time seem to go by even more slowly, there is a lot of napping and taking saunas among the guests. There is also a fair amount of alcohol consumption. John Bockstoce is SO particular about his beverage of choice, he had several cases shipped aboard, not leaving it to Bill to supply him. Now, in our lethargy of ice, he is consuming his precious rum in the morning coffee. Then, about midday, wearing only Bermuda shorts and a bathrobe, he grabs a long metal deck pole, announces he is going for a walk, steps over the lowest deck rail onto the ice, and he is off. That, in turn, sets off a frenzy. I follow him onto the ice to take pictures. Then the female staff appears in bikinis, and two of the men have a snowboard and a long rope. We are on a HUGE flow, so the guys take turns pulling each other on the snowboard, so they can say they rode at the top of the world (almost). John is wandering. I am looking for polar bears!

photograph(s) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2018, @RbtGlennKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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Monday, May 27, 2019

Trustees for Alaska Needs Our Help


The Arctic got hot early this year. Klawock hit 70 degrees Fahrenheit in March, the earliest 70-degree day ever recorded in Alaska.

Arctic sea ice has hit a record low. Temperatures surged 30 to 40 degrees Fahrenheit above average across the Arctic Ocean. The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reached 415 parts per million for the first time in human history last weekend--the highest level in at least 800,000 years, and probably over 3 million.

We face a time of crisis, yet live in an age of distraction. We need to focus on how to make the changes we need to survive, yet we bounce from tweet to insult to faux pas to disinformation to GIF to tweet again.

The internet peddles in distraction, according to Nicholas Carr in his book, "The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains." It's not just that the online world distracts us, but that it alters how we think so that we remain in the shallows of thought.

Distraction is now the tool, the method, the tactic, the commodity, and the ultimate goal. The business of distraction seeks your attention, not depth of content or deep thinking.

The same goes for our political and social systems. Those with and in power have latched onto distraction as the means to holding power. They bump and derail thoughts and conversations like pick pockets exploiting a crowded street. They throw shade on people whose ideas and solutions threaten their power. They fund disturbance to keep people from unifying around their connections, common purposes and goals.

But we need deep solutions, not shallow ones.

The culture of distraction may alter our brains, but we have the choice to not let our brains be duped. Each of us chooses what we want to spend our time absorbing and lifting up. Each of us can turn our attention to where our values lie.

My values do not align with the Trump administration's, so I don't need to put attention on his tweets. There is very little that's meaningful in his 280-character blasts anyway--they're driven by his need for attention and to distract from his misdeeds and what's important.

We need to be mindful of how we spend our time and energy. We need to set time aside to turn off the chatter. We need to concentrate on the climate crisis and all the interconnected challenges on our doorstep. The question isn't whether we should reduce emissions, stop the burning of fossil fuels, invest in sustainable energy, and support those on the front lines of violent storms, erosion, floods and droughts.

Those things are no-brainers. We must think deeply and act quickly to address climate change. Take a break from your online world and demands to focus on solutions. Mother Earth needs you!!




Vicki Clark
Executive Director
Trustees of Alaska
PS: Your support of Trustees for Alaska is critical now more than ever.

Sunday, May 19, 2019

The 40th Anniversary of Venice Family Clinic Art Walk & Auction

The 40th Anniversary of Venice Family Clinic Art Walk & Auction will be held on Sunday, May 19, 2019 at Google Los Angeles.



"Say No To The Pebble Mine"

by Robert Glenn Ketchum
26” x 36”
photograph, LexJet Metallic photographic print, 
face-mounted on 1/4” plexiglass to hang as is, 2019


This annual event brings thousands of artists, art enthusiasts and collectors together to help raise over $850,000 to help provide high-quality comprehensive health care to 27,000 low-income, homeless, undocumented, and otherwise uninsured people. Nearly fifty years ago, we started with one clinic in Venice. Thanks to our dedicated artists and patrons, the clinic has now expanded to 12 sites in Venice, Santa Monica, Mar Vista, Inglewood, and Culver City – as well as street outreach to homeless populations from the Westside of Los Angeles to Downtown LA.


Monday, May 6, 2019

NRDC to World Bank: “Location, Community, and Climate-Smart” by Joel Reynolds

NRDC to World Bank: “Location, Community, and Climate-Smart”

May 06, 2019

by Joel Reynolds, Western Director, Senior Attorney, Marine Mammals, Oceans Division, Nature Program

At last week’s launch of World Bank’s Climate-Smart Mining Facility, NRDC elevates importance of place and community, citing reckless Pebble Mine as poster child for “wrong mine, wrong place.” Last Wednesday in Washington, D.C., I was pleased to attend a gathering at the World Bank accompanying the launch of its climate-smart mining initiative—a public-private initiative based on the imperative that the realities of climate change and the accelerating transition to a green energy economy must become a central focus of present and future decision-making in the global mining sector.

Monday, April 29, 2019

Weekly Post: The Higher You Get, The Higher You Get by Robert Glenn Ketchum (#101-200)

Continued. . .

by Robert Glenn Ketchum


Growing up my parents had a home near Sun Valley, Idaho. It was there that I learned to ski. Over many years I befriended members of the Decker Flats Climbing and Frisbee Club, with whom I had both life, and art-forming outdoor experiences. I had my camera, and these are my adventures.  Enjoy!!  ~Robert Glenn Ketchum



Monday, March 22020

The Higher You Get, The Higher You Get - Sun Valley and the DFC&FC, #200: DFCFC, #200: As edge my way along the lakeshore, Belle, my lab, keeps sticking her nose into the snow to investigate whatever she smells beneath it, and as a consequence, her snout is cutely decorated with powder. In fact, everything around me is decorated with powder, and as I draw closer to Schiestler Peak, there is much powder decoration to ponder. The light snowfall has etched the granite crags and terraces, making them more pronounced, and the blowing winds of the past night have knocked all the snow from the trees, so they stand in sharp contrast to the bedecked rocks. The weather is streaming through overhead, the clouds zooming across the skies, driven by high winds in the upper atmosphere. When breaks in the weather appear, pockets of sunlight flash blindingly across the landscape, which I work myself into a frenzy trying to capture on film, but it is COLD, I am still sleepy, and I have not yet hit my morning stride. The tripod legs are especially cold, even through my gloves, but hey! I’m havin’ some fun now. Actually, I am. It is a blustery, beautiful beginning of the day, but I am definitely going to want breakfast when I get back to camp, starting with something hot to drink.

photograph(s) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2020, @RbtGlennKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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Monday, April 22, 2019

HELP WANTED: Hypothetical Partner for the Pebble Mine by Joel Reynolds, NRDC

HELP WANTED: Hypothetical Partner for the Pebble Mine


April 22, 2019

Joel Reynolds, Natural Resources Defense Council

Canadian owner of widely condemned Bristol Bay mine desperately seeks new partner with a few billion to spare. Financial, social, and environmental indifference required. No need to apply if you’re fazed by economic infeasibility, relentless local opposition, pervasive risk, and potentially catastrophic social and environmental impacts.

It’s no secret that Northern Dynasty Minerals (aka the Pebble Partnership)—the sole remaining partner in the embattled Pebble Mine proposed for the headwaters of Alaska’s Bristol Bay—is in urgent need of a new financial partner. To be sure, after four of the world’s major mining companies (Mitsubishi Corporation, Anglo American, Rio Tinto, and First Quantum Minerals) have walked away from the project since 2011, it’s a tough sell.

At last year’s general meeting of shareholders, Northern Dynasty CEO Ron Thiessen expressed confidence they can make a deal. The only question, he told me, is “what deal”—that is, what terms will be required to entice a buy-out or at least a new major partner. With the company’s history of failed partnerships in mind, I began to speculate about what the profile of such a partner, if indeed there is one to be found, might look like.

Here, in no particular order, are some essential characteristics:

(1) Unconcerned by financial risk
Contrary to industry practice—and despite repeated requests—Pebble has refused to release an economic feasibility analysis for its latest mine plan, now under permit review by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. When asked by the Army Corps’ consultant AECOM to produce information on Pebble’s “cost/feasibility,” the company refused, citing a Canadian securities regulation whose purpose is to prevent securities fraud relating to mining properties. When pressed by the Bristol Bay Native Corporation (“BBNC”) last December, Pebble’s CEO Tom Collier, too, declined, explaining that such an analysis “remains on our to-do list.” Just this month, pressed by E&E News, he demurred once again because “an economic analysis is not a required piece of the permitting puzzle.”

Thursday, March 28, 2019

Weekly Post, NO PEBBLE MINE: Pictures from Ground Zero (#301-350) by Robert Glenn Ketchum

NO PEBBLE MINE Pictures from Ground Zero
by Robert Glenn Ketchum

 
Since 1998, I have been working to protect the spectacular resources of southwest Alaska and the fishery of Bristol Bay. Two Aperture books, a national traveling exhibition, a massive coalition of concerned users, and a lot of personal lobbying, had it looking like we were almost there. Then Donald Trump took office claiming he would always put America, and American jobs first. SO WHY destroy a BILLION-dollar-a-year, RENEWABLE salmon fishery and over 100,000 jobs for a group of international mineral speculators that will leave us with a Superfund site to clean up, and NO fishery left edible? And yet, he did,..so please, keep saying NO TO THE PEBBLE MINE!
~Robert Glenn Ketchum



Tuesday, May 28, 2019 

NO PEBBLE MINE #350, Pictures from Ground Zero
NO PEBBLE MINE #350:  This ADF&G cabin on the Kanektok is NOT on an island in the river, but rather on a high bank of the river. That allows me a lot more room to walk around. On the evening of my arrival, I take advantage of this, find a few nice POV’s along the river, and experience another beautiful sunset, before dinner and sleep. After my stay with these rangers, I will go back to Quinhagak, where a plane will pick me up, and I will have a chance to overfly the entire river, to give me the broader view of what I will now experience at river-level. To best explain all of this, I am going to mix some of those overflight pictures in now. The buildings in the image above are one of the few fishing camps allowed on the river. More importantly, you can also see the scale of this waterway, and the myriad confusing meanders that spring from it, and feed back into it. To navigate the Kanektok without getting grounded or stranded, requires considerable experience, and I am thankful to have guides, one of whom is Native, and lives in the village.

photograph(s) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2019, @RbtGlennKetchum @LittleBearProd @NRDC @OrvisFlyFishing #NoPebbleMine #LittleBearProd

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Orvis Supports No Pebble Mine

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