On Thursday, July 19, Daily photographer Greg Funka trained his camera toward the Amphitheater stage from the facility’s crow’s nest and captured 16 hours of a day in the life of Chautauqua’s programmatic hub. Funka then created a two-minute time-lapse video of what the camera saw, from preparations for Morning Worship to tear-down of the stage set-up for a Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra performance.
Photojournalist Brian Skerry’s story on harp seals was one of his first cover stories focused on environmental issues for National Geographic magazine, published in 2004. During Thursday’s morning lecture in the Amphitheater, he took the audience through his personal journey as a photographer.
Skerry shared two photos from when he worked on the harp seal story. One was of a hunter dragging a seal carcass to land. In another, a seal five or six days old had fallen through thin ice, and its mother was frantically pushing it up for air. Though the seal survived, many others do not.
The story inspired Skerry to work on more stories focused on environmental issues in the ocean, he said. He has explored many places around the world to photograph a variety of marine wildlife.
Having spent more than 10,000 hours underwater during the past 30 years, photojournalist Brian Skerry knows some of the ocean’s lions, and tigers and bears.
But many predators, captured beautifully in photographs by Skerry, are on the brink of extinction — with 90 percent of the ocean’s sharks and big fish having disappeared in the past 50 years.
“We’re killing in excess of 100 million sharks every single year,” he said. “We can’t kill 100 million predators in any ecosystem and expect it to remain healthy.”
Skerry will discuss the importance of marine conservation at 10:45 a.m. Thursday in the Amphitheater. He will take the audience on a photographic journey through the world’s oceans, introducing people to things he thinks about while photographing, what he looks for to tell a story for National Geographic magazine and some of the interesting characters he has met through the years — including sharks, whales, saltwater crocodiles and more.
Water’s importance to life on earth cannot be overstated — without it, there is none. This week, in partnership with National Geographic Society, Chautauqua presents “Water Matters,” a series of 10:45 a.m. Amphitheater lectures exploring our world of water, including availability, conservation, health and politics.
On Monday, returning Chautauqua lecturer Sandra Postel joins Dennis Dimick in a joint lecture introducing the week. Postel is director of the independent Global Water Policy Project and the Freshwater Fellow of the National Geographic Society. Dimmick is National Geographic magazine’s executive editor for the environment and has been key to shaping the magazine’s award-winning reporting, particularly on climate change, since 2003.
Downstairs in the Strohl Art Center, children’s books morph into avian shapes and take flight across a wall. Around the corner, young women wearing surgical masks stand encased in a glass box. Upstairs, the underwater world is illuminated and animated behind a photography exhibit’s glass, and behind that, the works on paper of some of the most important artists of the 1970s and ’80s take the visitor on a tour of the history of American Abstraction. Sunday from 3–5 p.m. is the Opening Reception for the exhibits in the Strohl galleries, and the art is coming alive.
The Chautauquan Daily 