Born in 1963, Joerg Boethling (www.visualindia.de) started photography in 1985 on voyages as seaman on cargo vessels to Africa and Asia.
1992 he studied Visual Communication/Documentary Photography at the Fine Art College HfbK in Hamburg.
He has worked as photographer with agenda PG, a group of independent photographers and journalists, from 1995 to 2012.
Since 2012 he is freelance photographer based in Hamburg/Germany.
He is working worldwide and focusing on subjects like rural development, sustainable agriculture, fair trade, environment, social issues, renewable energy, economy, migration, labour, globalization, religion, culture and others.
An urgent message is carried through these images: that environmental degradation is not someone else’s problem. This is our shared Earth and it is our collective responsibility to protect it.
Our planet is in crisis; a crisis captured through this collection of photo essays taken by world-class photographers. It tells a story of environmental degradation and gives a voice to some of the forgotten peoples who are paying the price. This issue of PRIVATE takes us on a journey across the world, highlighting the human and environmental costs of “development” from our rivers and land to the skies above us.
The construction of large dams in the Narmada valley is a big ecological disaster as many forests and fertile agricultural land mainly of the indian tribals (Adivasi) will be submerged and people displaced.
When I look at the twenty photographers which make up this Metropolis edition of PRIVATE, it’s not what makes the cities different from each other that strikes me, in fact I’d say that these big cities are very similar to each other, not in their detail, faces, bodies and scenes, but in the variety of emotions which they arouse and which we all experience.
