Using “Fairy Dust” to Help Them Fly: The

Strategic Use of Photography in the

Conservation Movement

Elizabeth A. GervaisPh.D. candidate, Sociology

University of California, Riversideeschw001@ucr.edu • @eagervais

Research Goal• Examine conservation organizations’ use of

photography. • Why partner with iLCP?• What were the goals of the expedition?

International League of Conservation Photographers (iLCP)

“As a project-driven organization, our goal is to translate conservation science into compelling visual messages targeted to specific audiences. We work with leading scientists, policy makers, government leaders and conservation groups to produce the highest-quality documentary images of both the beauty and wonder of the natural world and the challenges facing it.”

• Drew from 25 iLCP partnering organizations

• 7 in-depth, semi-structured interviews fromJuly 2013 to February 2014

• director of communications, communications and policy director, communications manager, senior manager of marketing and science, director, officer, president

Key staff from partnering conservation organizations

Tactics

“forms of collective action publicly deployed,

whether in-person or via audio, visual, or written

media, in service of a sustained campaign of

claims making.”

-Larson 2013 p. 866

Choice of tactics• Strategic and rational (least costly)

• Shaped by resources, organization, and different political contexts

• Cultural perspective: tactical choice is a process that involves gathering, interpreting, and evaluating information within contexts that may be changing, uncertain, and even contradictory

Art as a nimble strategy

“I think that [the emphasis on art] came from the

fact that 350.org was always working low- budget,

and the question was, ‘how do we get attention, how

do we get media, and how do we inspire people to

be a part of this?’…”--Alex Bea 350.org (in Hestres 2013 p. 10)

“Nowadays we are as likely to use a shot from a

renowned, skilled, highly trained professional using

state of the art capture, processing, and image filing

equipment, as we are to use one from a cheap

mobile phone in the hands of a teenager in Kabila.”--Wayne Minter, audiovisual manager of Amnesty International (in Ritchin 2013 p. 105)

Why partner with iLCP?• Try something new • Enhance their current communications efforts• Soft methods of resistance

People are like why are you taking these crazy photos? Why are you spending money on these photos? “These forests are really, really cool…when you’re in them you just…you feel small and big all at the same time and…they’re captivating and…they’re like fairy forests [that] you might have imagined as a little kid. Everyone was like, oh my god, [she] likes to save her fairy forest.I just think they tell a different kind of story than words can tell, than video can tell…it just it helps people understand, it brings people to that place, and makes them connect with it, in a much more personal way.”

Fairy dust

“Someone was criticizing it, calling it, ‘oh it’s fairy

dust.’ And so I turned around…and it was a very

important donor, actually; so I turned around and I

was like, ‘you know what? It has helped us fly. Your

fairy dust works. So call it whatever, just keep it

coming, okay, I can’t fly without dust.’”

Try something new

“Because we do a lot of moving images and video

and I wanted to try a different way to connect with

people. I had heard about iLCP in the past, I did not

really know exactly what they did, or what the

impact of their work was. I did think they had quite a

nice reputation, and I felt I wanted to see how that

worked, and get some nice images out of it as well.”

Enhancing current efforts“Because a lot of what we do is about communicating how

wonderful this place where we work is and the wonder of the

animal, plants, forest, reef, and of course images are very

very powerful, photos are a part of that, not only photos,

images generally, by the way we deal a lot with visual art as

well, but I wanted to partner with iLCP because we really

wanted to have some powerful images to help us

communicate about the wonders of the place.”

Enhancing current efforts

“The iLCP…gave us the access to Daniel and some of

these other guys and we also wanted to use their

contacts as another platform, just to get the

information out there on different levels and a

different world than what we are accustomed to.”

Soft resistance

“I wanted to careful not to be too antagonistic

because I had a relationship with the government…”

Soft resistance“I saw some of the other [iLCP expeditions] that happened, there was one that happened the year before called the Great Bear RAVE and it went to a rainforest in British Columbia and looked very closely at the Northern Gateway Pipeline, and that was a very activist approach. We would give it more gentle approach just because it’s a very different situation in the Philippines where we were working.”

What were the goals of the iLCP expeditions?• Communicate• Impact decision-makers• Generate networks

Communicate

“The primary goal was to assemble a set of

compelling, wonderful, mostly beautiful, although

some were of destruction, images that could help us

tell a story in a compelling way.”

Impact decision-makers“The goal for me was to have an impact on…some of the decision-makers in French Polynesia about if they were going to put in any marine protections. We could give them a scientific report, which would have a lot of numbers, facts, and percentages, and that would not be massively inspiring but to help somebody feel like they need to take action, there’s a difference between statistics and emotions. If you want somebody to feel that they need to take action on this… you have to make them feel that it’s worth doing something.”

Generate/strengthen networks“The secondary goal of our expedition…in everything [that] we do, we are trying to strengthen the international partnerships that we’re in. We had two iLCP photographers and we partnered them with one local Indonesian photographer, so was not an iLCP member but was one of Indonesia’s premier professional wildlife photographers, and he joined up as well, so another goal…was to strengthen that partnership and have everybody learn from one another.”

What can we learn from organizations working with conservation photographers?• Justification

• They understand their context

• Indirect outcomes