Environmental portraits at the birth of the EPA

I was pretty excited when a few years back Jeremy Herliczek, a photographer and a graduate student at Michigan State University, offered to create a portal to a little known gem of the Environmental Protection Agency. Called Documerica, the EPA project attempted to document the state of the environment at the birth of that agency.

The trouble is that accessing those old environmental images is difficult. So, too, is simply sorting through them.

Jeremy’s project for his masters thesis was to create galleries of some of the best images, explain the history of the project and also explain how to manipulate the ponderous system for retrieving them.

MSU’s Knight Center for Environmental Journalism – which produces Great Lakes Echo – sponsored his research and hosts that effort.  Take a look. Make sure to click on the link for the galleries Jeremy curated.

That’s pretty nice stuff.

But frankly I had forgotten about it until recently reading on MinnPost that Documerica is going on tour. The National Archives is sending the images out on a series of traveling displays. Check out that report for another dose of the images of the U.S. environment from the 1970s.

One thought on “Environmental portraits at the birth of the EPA

  1. This looks like a great resource to check out. It’s especially important for younger generations to learn of the historical challenges, along with the progress and failures that have occurred. The old adage that “Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it” is very, very true. And right now, it seems like America has mass amnesia.

    Since the first Earth Day in 1971, we have made progress in some areas (air & water quality, in particular), but we seem to be backsliding. In other areas, we are out-and-out failures. Human overpopulation has skyrocketed, and habitat loss and species extinctions have accelerated accordingly. This is not the planet it once was. Humans have overrun the world to such an extent that we are simply destroying all other species which have co-existed, and enriched our lives, for millennia.

    Our society has devolved back to the robber-baron mentality of the 1800s–where the mantra is “greed is good”, regardless of the consequences. Any concern for the well-being of people is derided as being “socialist”, instead of Golden Rule. International corporations and the wealthiest .1% have so bought our political system, that nearly all laws favor them, as opposed to the middle and lower economic classes, or equality and fairness.

    Yes, we have come a long way since 1971. The Republicans claim that this coming election is the most important election in our history…and to that, I have to agree.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *