Zuzanna Szarek & Andri Snær Magnason - In Search of Lost Time

In Search of Lost Time is a series about time and our impact on nature. It is a collaboration between polish photographer Zuzanna Szarek and Icelandic writer and activist Andri Snær Magnason. 

"Scientists have shown us that the foundations of life, of Earth itself, are failing. The principal ideologies of the twentieth century considered the Earth and nature as sources of inexpensive, infinite raw material. Humans assumed that the atmosphere could continually absorb emissions, that oceans could endlessly absorb waste, that soil could constantly renew itself if given more fertilizer, that animal species would keep moving aside as humans colonized more and more space. 

Over the next hundred years, there will be foundational changes in the nature of water on our Earth. Glaciers will melt away. Ocean levels will rise. Increasing global temperatures will lead to droughts and floods. The oceans will acidify to a degree not seen for fifty million years. All this will happen during the lifetime of a child who is born today and lives to be my grandmother's age, ninety-five.

Earth's mightiest forces have forsaken geological time and now change on a human scale. Changes that previously took a hundred thousand years now happen in one hundred. Such speed is mythological; it affects all life on Earth, affects the roots of everything we think, choose, produce, and believe. It affects everyone we know, everyone we love. We are confronted by changes that are more complex than most of what our minds typically deal with. These changes surpass any of our previous experiences, surpass most of the language and metaphors we use to navigate our reality."