An Interview with Jamey Stillings • CHANGING PERSPECTIVES: JAPAN

During his first trip to Japan, Jamey Stillings undertook a new chapter of Changing Perspectives by documenting a myriad of renewable energy projects above the country's complex urban and rural landscapes. Jamey and George's close collaboration enabled a well-researched and planned series of flights around Tokyo and Kobe/Osaka.

Jamey, after many years of wanting to visit Japan, what finally brought you here?

I met Takeki Sugiyama at Review Santa Fe in 2013. In 2016, Takeki invited me to be a guest artist and keynote speaker at the Mount Rokko International Photo Festival in Kobe, Japan. I looked forward to my first trip to Japan, but I wanted it to be more than just a visit. It seemed like a perfect opportunity to expand my aerial documentary project: Changing Perspectives: Renewable Energy and the Shifting Human Landscape.

My studio staff and I were well underway on our research about renewable energy sites in Japan, but our methods were imperfect, and our was progress slow. One afternoon, during a coffee break in Santa Fe, I had the good fortune to meet you – friendly, bright, passionate about photography, and having a distinctive background. It is one thing to be bi-lingual, quite another to fully understand the social and business intricacies of Japan, Canada, and the United States. You were all of that and more!

I invited you to my studio the following day. I found a willing collaborator/facilitator to help me realize the goal of an aerial project over Japan. You responded enthusiastically to my photography and understood the nature and limitations of an underfunded documentary project. Your interpersonal skills, research approach, and business savvy helped me focus on creating an aerial project that would work in editorial photo essays and museum exhibitions.

What made Changing Perspectives: Japan unique from earlier work on your project?

Early chapters of Changing Perspectives centered on the dramatic desert landscapes of the American West. Massive utility-scale projects like Ivanpah Solar, Desert Sunlight, Crescent Dunes Solar, and Ocotillo Wind presented themselves as huge architectural installations within this context.

Japan's approach to stewardship of its land and water resources stands in distinct contrast to this. An island nation with a millennia-long history, the concepts of reuse, repurposing, and multiple-use are intrinsic to Japanese culture. The 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and subsequent Fukushima nuclear disaster caused Japan to reassess its dependence on nuclear power as a primary source of electricity generation. Building renewable energy capacity, predominantly in the form of photovoltaic (PV) projects, became one answer in their quest for alternatives.

During our flights over Japan, I encountered a wide range of photovoltaic projects on former golf courses, quarries, dams, man-made islands, and floating projects on ponds and reservoirs. Projects were interspersed and integrated into complex urban and suburban communities, industrial zones, and forested areas in unique and visually compelling ways.

How did these complex landscapes and urbanscapes impact the way you photographed over Japan?

Photographing over Japan's urban and agricultural areas required a distinct form of visual concentration. Edges, corners, geometric alignments, what to include or exclude, how to wrestle the view below into submission, and how to manage summer haze and backscatter… Nothing could be taken for granted. Everything, except for a project within a forest in south Chiba, challenged me differently than singular projects within isolated desertscapes of the American West.

Do you have any fun anecdotes from your flights during a concentrated eight days of project work?

Among many, a few special moments rise to the top…

There were many restrictions for taking off early from official heliports in Japan. With sunrise about 5:00 AM, it would have been unthinkable to wait until 9:00 AM for morning flights. In Yokohama, the helicopter service found an abandoned tennis court behind a "love hotel" where the rules could be bent for our purposes. We may have been the only males to be in the area without ulterior motives!!!

The helicopter service in Tsukuba, concerned that I might take life into my own hands with the helicopter door removed, chained me to the passenger seat. I don't know what I would have done had we encountered mechanical issues that forced an emergency landing!

And a fantastic show of hospitality and generosity by Mr. Ogawa, the owner of Ogawa Air, who treated his staff and us to a delicious lunch of Kobe beef, fine wine, and Ise lobster in an amazing private dining room at the Westin Awaji Island Resort.

How was Changing Perspectives: Japan received back in the United States?

One big frustration about trying to publish international chapters of Changing Perspectives has been the ethnocentric nature of the United States. The Japan work has only seen limited exposure in the U.S. What makes the work over Japan so interesting to me is how small, mostly photovoltaic projects, are woven into existing urban and rural environments. My favorite examples of this are floating PV plants on ponds and reservoirs that dot the landscape. Floating PV projects don’t compete with demands for land use. They are easily installed and removed, earthquake resistant, and are 10-15% more efficient than land-based projects because of the evaporative cooling effect of water.

BUT, these are not the “biggest” or the “newest” PV plants, so they are not considered exciting or newsworthy to the American media. They don’t align easily with our perception of utility-scale projects or smaller community-based distributed generation projects.

Fortunately, Hideko Kataoka, photo editor at Newsweek Japan, has been very supportive of my work through the past decade. In the magazine’s Picture Power section, she has published work from The Bridge at Hoover Dam, The Evolution of Ivanpah Solar, Changing Perspectives: Japan, and, most recently, my work over the Atacama Desert in Chile.

Tell me about the newest chapter of Changing Perspectives in Chile.

The newest project of Changing Perspectives is titled: ATACAMA: Renewable Energy and Mining in the High Desert of Chile. Whenever possible, I choose projects that have lessons or implications beyond the specific subject I am photographing. Chile produces one-third of the world’s copper and has the largest known lithium reserves, much of it in the Atacama. You and I use Chilean resources every day in our phones, computers, and cars.

The Chilean mining industry has been dependent on imported fossil fuels for decades. Coal, diesel, and natural gas travel via ship to ports like Mejillones, where they are either used to produce electricity or transported directly to the mines. At the same time, the Atacama Desert has some of the best solar and wind potential on the planet. Over the past seven years, the cost of solar and wind electricity production has fallen below that of fossil fuels. It now makes both geographic and economic sense to produce renewable energy in the Atacama. This electricity supplies power both to mining operations and to cities in the north and south. The nexus of renewable energy and mining is a complex one, but the lessons of Chile’s move to renewable energy apply to mine operations throughout the world. Renewable energy can lower the carbon footprint of mining globally.

And work from the ATACAMA project is scheduled to become your next book, correct?

Yes! I am working hard to complete my third book, ATACAMA: Renewable Energy and Mining in the High Desert of Chile. David Chickey is once again designing the book, while Gerhard Steidl has agreed to publish it. Working with David and Gerhard for my previous book, The Evolution of Ivanpah Solar, was a great experience and resulted in a beautifully designed and printed book. I look forward to our collaboration on ATACAMA.

How is the Coronavirus pandemic impacting the Atacama book’s publication, future Changing Perspectives projects, and your commercial assignment work?

The Coronavirus pandemic has turned every aspect of our lives upside down. Aside from the apparent direct health dangers throughout the world, the economic hardships we are seeing are without precedent in our lifetimes. My family, my staff, and I are all dealing with the consequences of the pandemic. My nuclear family is self-isolating within the cohousing community in which we live. My team has been working remotely since mid-March. We are all healthy.

My staff and I are working on completing the design and pre-production of the book, knowing that actual publication will depend heavily on how the months ahead unfold. Steidl Verlag, like millions of businesses around the world, is in a difficult holding pattern. We don’t yet know when companies will be able to resume “normal” operations. And art photo book publishing is no exception. I can only keep my fingers crossed.

As for pending photoshoots, whether for commercial assignments or Changing Perspectives… the future is even more uncertain. Virtually all my commercial assignment work involves national or international travel – airplanes, rental cars, hotels, and restaurants…and I go into people’s homes and businesses. None of this is possible at the moment! While the next chapter of Changing Perspectives has yet to take form, previous projects always involved travel and photographing from helicopters and small planes. We are in a unique and challenging state of limbo.

Any pearls of wisdom during this challenging and uncertain time?

If I have one bit of wisdom to impart, born of experience, it would be this… Strive to keep who you are, as a valuable, creative, loving human, being separate from the economic hardship you may be experiencing. The difficulties and strife you are facing or may face in the months ahead are the results of a global pandemic and the failures of economic and governmental systems. They are not your fault.

If you have a roof over your head, food in your belly, good health, along with family and friends who love you, then you are among the fortunate, even if your monetary “numbers” suck. As you have energy and capacity, be kind and generous to others. Smile at people you encounter. Say, “Thank you!” We are all in this together and must strive to support each other!

Speaking of support, you can support Jamey’s important work on ‘Changing Perspectives’ by donating to the 501c3 Blue Earth Alliance, which needs funds every year to make this project possible.