They occupy mines, paint the doors of ministries or works of art, block highways and, often, clash with the police. Mostly young, sometimes discouraged by legal actions or large street demonstrations, the activists who mobilize in favor of the climate, to defend an environment invaded and degraded by man, prefer to act on the spot.
Their initiatives, often spectacular, are widely publicized. This is why the four photographers who make up the Italian collective TerraProject, based in Florence and created in 2006, wondered how to approach this subject. “How can we find an original angle to tell this commitment and illustrate climate change? “, questions Rocco Rorandelli, while specifying that all four of them were “very motivated to understand the relationships between humans and nature”. With Michele Borzoni, another photographer in the collective, he decided to follow mobilizations in several European countries.
In Germany, in 2021, while working on a subject concerning coal mines, they met activists from Ende Gelände, very involved against projects to expand these mines. In Lisbon, Portugal, it was rather young people in school, fighting against fossil fuels, who caught their attention. In Austria, Belgium and Italy, TerraProject also chose to show actions, sometimes carried out by a few individuals, always young, against public buildings or lobbyist conferences with the aim of marking their opposition to fossil fuels, origin of global warming.
“It’s complicated to be accepted”
Generally members of groups (Extinction Rebellion, Last Generation, Just Stop Oil, etc.), “they are very informed, have read a lot, have great scientific knowledge”, explains Rocco Rorandelli. “They are not always very organized but they are passionate and can create real communities, for example in base camps, during their actions. We tried to show, behind a general profile, their diversity,” he adds.
These activists, whose objective is to organize demonstrations with a strong impact, on the other hand fear personalization, never reveal their identity and are very reluctant to show their face. Rocco Rorandelli recounts the long road he and Michele Borzoni took to convince them to take their portraits. “It’s complicated to be accepted. For several weeks, we had to establish contacts, by telephone, by email, before being able to carry out this work, which mixes images of collective actions and individual portraits. »
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