Illustrated Talk

[Apr 22]

On Earth Day from 2 to 3:30 p.m. at the Grace Hudson Museum, photographers Rob Badger and Nita Winter of Marin County will give an illustrated talk on the methods and motives behind the Museum's current exhibit, Beauty and the Beast: California Wildflowers and Climate Change, which they curated. The event is free with Museum admission.

Climate change refers to any long-term change in the earth's weather patterns. It has been clearly linked to the warming of the earth's surface due to greenhouse gas emissions, resulting in more unstable and extreme weather cycles (including cold snaps and heavy snow), crop failures, and more frequent and destructive storms. These events are no longer a distant threat but a daily reality that people worldwide are confronting on a variety of levels--personal, professional, and practical. Yet Badger and Winter, life partners who have been collaborating on photography projects for the last ten years after decades devoted to separate careers in that field, decided to approach the grim and often divisive issue of climate change from a new angle: aesthetic. Badger, in particular, had grown tired of the environmental photography he had pursued, documenting degradation of lands through mining, logging, and other industrial human use. "I got the inspiration to do something positive with the work we're doing," he comments.

These days, people seem not to agree on much, but they all can stop and marvel at the beauty of a flower. By emphasizing the value of what remains, Badger and Winter hope to create a common will to preserve it. The couple ranged throughout the considerable length and breadth of the Golden State, from the desert expanses of Anza-Borrego State Park near the Mexican border to the Siskiyou Mountains in the state's far north, to capture their images, which include exuberant super blooms (which used to occur rarely but have become more frequent with climate change) as well as precise and colorful portraits of individual flowers, from the widespread California poppy to cactus flowers of the desert and the elegant mountain lady's slipper of the Sierra Nevada.

Then again, "capture" may be the wrong word, since Badger and Winter's approach is all about coexistence. Winter, who brings the same appreciation for the plant world as she brought to her photojournalism assignments--which found her documenting the homeless and other marginalized communities--spots wildflowers from a distance while she and Badger walk on public lands. (She was known as "Eagle Eye" as a kid.) Badger, carrying as much as 65 pounds of equipment, then sets up trailside and photographs the flower or blooming field, leaving the plants they encounter intact. Other photographers often assume the creative couple brought the flowers to a studio, due to their photos' varied lighting--at times direct, at times diffuse; Badger carries reflectors and other lighting equipment in his pack, creating trailside what Winter calls "a natural light studio." The results are breathtaking and intimate, supporting Badger and Winter's view of nature not as an abstract entity, but as a living being containing plants and other life forms that are singular, fragile and resilient.

Although Badger admits that this method of work can be time-consuming, he adds: "There's a great joy to what we do. It's such a wonderful reward to get down to eye level with a plant.” In their search of beauty, he and Winter encounter "all the individual beings that spontaneously cooperate to make this dynamic web of life possible." The result is a wedding of process and product that instructs as it delights.

Badger and Winter are also completing a book based on the exhibit, and with the same title, scheduled for release in 2019. In addition to their extensive wildflower photos, they are collecting writings from cutting-edge authors, scientists, Native elders and activists in the fields of botany, citizen science, fire management, technology and more.

This event is cosponsored by the Sanhedrin Chapter of the California Native Plant Society.

The Grace Hudson Museum is at 431 S. Main St. in Ukiah. The Museum is open Wednesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and Sunday from noon to 4:30 p.m. General admission is $4; $10 per family; $3 for students and seniors; free to all on the first Friday of the month; and always free to members. For more information please go to www.gracehudsonmuseum.org or call (707) 467-2836.

–Roberta Werdinger