Brining the nature inside

Silent Spring – Silver Eye Honors Rachel Carson

An Exhibit and Silent… Silent Spring – Silver Eye Honors Rachel Carson

An Exhibit and Silent Auction

Through May 31

Silver Eye center for Photography

1015 E. Carson St.

(412) 431-1810

www.silvereye.org

As I walked into the gallery at the Silvery Eye Center for Photography, I was immediately attracted to “Live Oak” by Tom Hardy, a black and white close-up of a huge oak tree boasting bulky veins and slithering roots. Then I realized why I liked it so much. It reminded me of the Nets, the walking, talking tree people from “Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.” There I was at an exhibit and silent auction honoring the woman who gave the environmental movement its first birthing push, and I was appreciating nature vicariously through Peter Jackson and computer generated special effects.

Suddenly the theme of the exhibit, and of Rachel Carson’s work hit me – beautiful, fragile, sadly disappearing nature in America, and our collective human attitude towards it. Maybe our attitudes need to change.

Rachel Carson grew up in Springdale, only 15 miles outside of Downtown Pittsburgh, and graduated from Chatham College. More importantly, she was a biologist and a highly acclaimed author. In 1962, her best selling book “Silent Spring” was the first shot fired in what became a war against chemical pesticides.

“Silent Spring” made the public aware of the harm that can be done by the mass killing of insects, an unrecognized part of the food chain, and by allowing chemicals to seep into the entire world’s food supply. Her ability to present meticulous research through prose was enough to launch a collective environmental consciousness. Soon after, Carson was attacked by the chemical industry and by some in our government. She was referred to as an “alarmist” and a “hysterical woman.” However, her writing remained strong and her main chemical adversary, DDT, was banned in 1972, eight years after her death from breast cancer.

The benefits vs. the harms of mass chemical pesticides such as DDT are still a controversy today. But Rachel Carson’s idea that we are inseparable from nature is what is important.

A lovely image by Annie O’Neill was the next to catch my eye. At first, “Blue” looks like nothing but a blue butterfly, the kind that makes you think it was a miracle that someone spotted it in time to snap a picture. It is the type of butterfly that should be resting peacefully on a tree. But it isn’t. It is resting peacefully on a pile of decaying rags. Is this today’s nature?

On the opposite wall, Joe Seamans’ “The Big Picture,” stood huge. He set an image of a power plant in Homer City, cooling towers, smoke-filled sky and all, as the background to a typical sunny picture of two happy sunbathers at the Sandcastle water park. The exhibit is filled with images that carry a similar impact, such as Pamela Bryan’s “Trampled Landscape,” a plot of land that could’ve been a field once, but is now an ugly sea of discarded tires.

Next I came upon a quotation of Carson’s displayed on the wall, “The lasting pleasures of contact with the natural world are not reserved for scientists. They are available to anyone who will place himself under the influence of earth, sea, and sky and their amazing life.” Beside the photos of what man has done to nature, all around me were photographs featuring wildlife and divine outdoor scenes. I decided to concentrate on those next.

Clyde Hare Daum’s “Icicles” is a magnified view of a melting icicle, with the sun’s rays flaring out behind it in a bright orange burst. Jane Huskell’s “Stones and Green Seaweed” is astounding; it is a very close look at something that would normally be considered “slimy” by someone at the beach. Slimy is beautiful.

In the back room I found colorful, clear images of flowers taken by Jo Anne Lightner, and a series of photos taken along the Rachel Carson Trail, in Springdale, by Stephen Simpson. Next to one frosty picture his quotation read, “Frozen for a moment amid winter wonder ethereal shimmers shiver. It’s a righteous experience along the Rachel Carson Trail.”

After all of this, I went back to that first photo. It was still beautiful, and it still reminded me of a movie. But I didn’t feel guilty about that anymore. The message came through a little more clearly – without the beauty of nature, there would never have been inspiration for these photographers, or Peter Jackson or J.R.R. Tolkien for that matter. This exhibit does its job. It makes us take a closer look at nature’s role in our lives. It shows that we are inseparable from nature. And it honors Rachel Carson for upholding that ideal.