Ben Manning: Summer Project - Breifing & Antonio Bronic

Over the summer, we have been given a brief of planning a photographic installation that covers a politically aware theme, be it youth vote, minority rights, poverty, etc. I have decided to pursue the theme of environmental issues as I feel that it is one of the more threatening issues that the world is currently facing, especially of recent times following the trauma that was caused by hurricane Harvey in areas like Texas, Florida and several Caribbean islands.

My plan is to study the work of photographers who have worked with capturing the main four elements; water, earth, wind and fire. These four elements play into the theme of environmental issues perfectly as they represent their own elemental disasters. Water leads to flooding, earth leads to earthquakes, wind leads to hurricanes and tornadoes and fire leads to larger fires!

One of the first photographers I have found is Antonio Bronic. Bronic is a Croatian born photographer who has a habit of putting himself in the middle of extreme situations, capturing the sense of misery and dark themes across the world. He tackles sensitive topics such as poverty, war, immigration, etc. There are a couple of photos from Bronic that I found really interesting that were captured during and just after an outbreak of wildfire in Mravince, Croatia.

Firefighters try to extinguish a wildfire in the village of Mravince near Split, Croatia

Local residents stand amid smoke as they leave their homes due to a wildfire in the village of Mravinc near Split, Croatia

What I like most about these photos is how Bronic clearly doesn't use a long lens; he prefers to get in amongst the danger so that when we look at these pictures, we feel as though we are a part of what is going on, especially in the firefighter picture. It makes us feel as though we ourselves are a firefighter about to tackle the wildfire as a team.

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