THE WAY HOME

DESCRIPTION

“It's plain to see that Stephen Gorman is a great photographer. But he is also one of those rare individuals who recognizes that the crises we face are systemic, with roots in a techno-economic machine that will – if we let it – destroy the living world. Having spent so much time among people still rooted to the land, he clearly sees what we need to learn from them: that the best path forward is towards localized, place-based cultures in which people are intimately connected to community and Nature.”

— Helena Norberg-Hodge, founder and Director of Local Futures; author of Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh; recipient of the Right Livelihood Award and the Goi Peace Prize

At a pivotal moment when converging crises place industrial civilization at a critical inflection point, this is a photographic exhibition about hope, about kindling positive new narratives that might catch fire in our collective imagination. It’s about how we can rebuild our communities, relocate ourselves in time and place, and imagine shifting our way of life from one of extraction and domination to one of reciprocity with the natural world and with each other. Through hard-won imagery and informative, thought-provoking commentary, this exhibition engages new audiences and re-engages established ones by exploring how we can find wisdom in the timeless stories we share and in the many other ways of knowing and being that are the common inheritance of all humanity.

We are living through a time of multiple cascading crises. The civilizational challenge we face is to re-align the way we live with non-negotiable biophysical limits. Compounding our challenge is that while many people living in industrial society support efforts to reign in carbon emissions and protect the environment, they also prize resource depleting and carbon emitting economic growth. How to reconcile these two conflicting imperatives is the dilemma of our time.

We can answer this challenge with grace, wisdom, dignity, imagination, and a good measure of courage. In doing so we may actually discover that we are living happier, healthier, more purposeful, and more satisfying lives. The goal of this exhibition is to bravely confront the hard but necessary questions we face as honestly as possible in order to arrive at genuinely helpful, generous, and rewarding responses to our predicament.

The climate and environment crisis is not a mere engineering problem. It is not simply a question of unplugging one energy technology and plugging in another. It is so much more formidable than that, requiring nothing less than a new cultural narrative guiding us towards a more just, sustainable, egalitarian, and reenchanted world.

And so this exhibition ask: “Are there alternatives to the way we live? Do the world’s thousands of distinct cultures — hunters, herders, fishers, farmers, and other place-based peoples who have adapted to an incredibly rich diversity of unique environments — have anything to teach the rest of us? What is it about their societies, their economies, their politics, and their cultures that has kept them from compromising their environments and life support systems? Can the rest of us learn from their examples in time to avert environmental and civilizational breakdown?”

Stepping outside the orthodox mainstream perspective, traveling to the clarifying margins in Arctic North America and Arctic Europe, visiting two very different cultures that have successfully maintained their traditional, sustainable, and egalitarian ways of life despite centuries of colonization, listening to and honoring the rich life experiences of overlooked yet proud and dignified people, The Way Home attempts to answer these questions, and it discovers that we do indeed have other options, other ways of interacting with the earth and with each other. This is a revelation that can only fill us with confidence that the actions we take today will be meaningful.

Our time is short. We might have begun this process decades ago. But we didn’t do that, and so here we are, and the next best time to begin is now. Fortunately, there are still many distinct human cultures on planet Earth that we can learn from, as well as some 7,000 different languages, each encoded with unique, ancient wisdom predicated upon particular places. Unfortunately, many of these languages have a mere ten lonely speakers or fewer, and we lose a language and its embodied knowlege forever every two weeks. With each language lost, humanity’s social, cultural, and environmental options diminish. As MIT linguist Kenneth Hale said, “When you lose a language, you lose a culture, intellectual wealth, a work of art. It’s like dropping a bomb on a museum, the Louvre.”

The Way Home is an urgent response to our planetary predicament, suggesting that if we view our situation in cultural rather than technological terms, we will have a better chance of seeing it for what it is and responding appropriately and effectively. It submits the idea that we can develop the quality Inuit call Isuma - “the knowledge and wisdom to successfully navigate new and unexpected circumstances.”

The photographs present viewers with the consequences of following our current cultural narrative of uncritical technological embrace, ever increasing complexity, spreading monoculture, and endless growth; but they also juxtapose that story by celebrating the beauty, wisdom, and resilience of traditional Inuit and Sami cultures.

Together the photographs, essays, and videos present new actionable ideas about how modern industrial society might imagine rearranging itself and choose to prioritize different pro-social and pro-environmental values. The Way Home suggests that we all will benefit by learning from Inuit and Sami sustainable and egalitarian ways of living that underscore how fundamentally inextricable people are from the places they inhabit. The photographs, videos, and commentary help us step outside of our culture into theirs, and we gain a new perspective. We come to understand that there are many pro-environmental and pro-social paths we can take. This fresh viewpoint is sharp and distinct; and the contrast with mainstream culture is stark.

Merging art, science, history, and culture, this exhibition investigates the root causes of our planetary predicament while discovering exciting possibilities for other ways of knowing and being on our one and only blue and green home. The Way Home shows us it is possible to learn, build, and share ecologically sound economic and cultural practices that activate the assets of local places.

CONTENTS: As proposed here the exhibition consists of 45 of Stephen Gorman's most powerful images -- photographs taken under challenging conditions in Arctic Alaska, Canada, Greenland, and Norway. This number can be increased. Essays, extended captions, thought provoking commentary, and videos accompany the photographs and contribute to a rich and unforgettable artistic and educational experience. In a challenging time The Way Home provides a hopeful message, showing that more sustainable and satisfying ways of living are possible for all humans, everywhere.

SUPPORT: Stephen Gorman will work closely with museum staff to produce educational and press content.

EDUCATION: Educational curriculums can be developed by Stephen Gorman, museum curators, and staff. Lectures, slide shows, and workshops for groups of all ages can be provided. Video recordings from Stephen’s travels with the Inuit and the Sami will be available for use in educational films. The Way Home will be accompanied by a rich array of talks, lectures, film screenings, and workshops focused on the big picture of what is driving our global predicament and what we can do about it.

BOOK/CATALOGUE: Many more photographs and additional essays are ready to put into book form to accompany the exhibition, for museum gift shops, and for the general book trade.

SALES: Sales merchandise such as prints, posters, and cards; copies of Stephen’s Benjamin Franklin Award winning Arctic Visions - Encounters at the Top of the World, which was comissioned by the Inuit of Nunavik, Canada; and his forthcoming book for children, Waiting For Winter, will be available for museum gift shops.