Abstract

LOOK Climate Lab is a biennial programme exploring how photography can be a relevant and powerful medium for talking about climate change. Starting from 18 January 2024, the gallery is transformed into a lab: bringing together researchers and artists to test their ideas and encouraging our audiences to discuss systematic changes needed for dealing with the climate crisis.

Max Gorbatskyi, curator, said:

We’re affecting the world around us, often in ways which we don’t even recognise. When taking a photograph today, it is probable that you capture a result or a cause of the climate crisis since its manifestations are ubiquitously around us.

Photography is capable of registering and representing, being essentially a trace itself. It provides us with a means to trace the changes we cause or the changes we can make to tackle climate change today. Photographs can comfort us, make us observe melancholically and passively the aesthetically attractive disasters; they can demonstrate rather poignantly the point between existence and loss, and by this, they can make us feel powerless. But at the same time, photographs can visualise the approaches and possible actions we can take to address the problems and bring change.

We’ve invited photographers, researchers and partners from different domains to share their observations and ideas on how we can make human-nature relationships more sustainable and fair.

For this edition of LOOK Climate Lab we are partnering with Gaia Foundation, Royal Horticultural Society, The Tree Council, Impressions Gallery, Peloton Liverpool Coop, Energy House Salford and many others to bring people and ideas together, explore the complexities of human-nature relationships and make positive changes to live more sustainable and connected lives.