Greenpeace wants you to re-design BP’s logo, the better to represent the global energy giant’s ever-increasing control of the environmental-disaster market. Catastrophe is the new hedge fund.

(Thanks, Eyeteeth.)

Source: Greenpeace

Image by Greenpeace.

From the Eyeteeth blog:

A former fashion photographer now doing documentary work, Izabella Demavlys writes in her artist's statement that “to illustrate a deeper definition of female beauty, I photograph women whose pictorial beauty radiates from their accomplishment, character and personal struggles.” Her latest series, “Without a Face,” offers a direct and profoundly affecting kind of beauty: portraits of Pakistani women healing after attacks by men wielding kerosene oil or battery acid. One, 20-year-old Memona, was attacked by a boy on her way to school; she's undergone some 30 reconstructive surgeries. Saira was burned by her husband for refusing to move in with him. According to Demavlys, 400 women in Lahore alone are currently awaiting surgery from such attacks.

In an arresting interview with Paul Schmelzer, Demavlys explains her latest work:

I was going around in circles for many years making meaningless work. Meaningless and uninspiring for others and myself. When I saw a story about a young girl, an acid burn victim working as a beautician in Pakistan last year, I immediately thought, “This is a person I need to meet.” I thought this woman stood for everything I wanted to express with my work. I never went to Pakistan with a fear that I would reduce them by photographing them, but rather feared that I wouldn’t be able to enhance them enough, showing what a source of inspiration they really are to me and to be able to convey that to others. To not show these photographs to the world would be to deprive them of their courage for sitting down for a portrait and later telling me their stories.

Source: Eyeteeth

Image courtesy of Izabella Demavlys. 

There is a wonderful conversation between photographer Zack Bent and journalist Paul Schmelzer over at Eyeteeth. Bent speaks of a piece of his called Lachrymatory—a clear vial he uses to collect his tears and the tears of his wife and children. He explains:

Tears fall often in our house. Collecting them in the vial became a similar ritual to kissing a bump on the head. It became an act of love. This is a case where my art practice heightened the quality of our inter-family relationships and made physically manifest our maternal and paternal care giving … The title Lachrymatory comes from the ancient tear catching vials that were often filled by grieving widows. I collect a lot of tears as a father. The piece definitely memorializes mourning and weakness. The result of the collection is salt; an element of preservation.

Source: Eyeteeth

Image courtesy of Zack Bent. 

As if abject data roundups like the Harper’s Index weren’t dour enough, there are even more depressing numbers being crunched. Gathering figures from the UK Independent, Bloomberg, and other sources, Eyeteeth compiles various statistics to show the country’s hellbound, handbasket-borne trajectory. 

For example: The Misery Index—by far the most poetically named of the numbers on offer—is calculated by adding unemployment to inflation. It’s at 10.5, its highest in 15 years. There’s a 30-year gap in the average life expectancy between residents of Connecticut and Mississippi (people in the former state live longer). And a new Time/Rockefeller poll shows that 52 percent of Americans believe the “American Dream” is no longer attainable.

The figures are worth a glance, but it’s also illuminating to click through and read the articles from which they’re derived, which examine some of the reasons behind our crumbling quality of life, place them in historical context, and offer suggestions for how we might reverse these negative trends.

Image by ang (3 Girls & a Boy), licensed by Creative Commons.