Dear Friends,

Here we go again, schlepping a small mountain of photo/video/sound recording gear back out to remote postage-stamp-sized Midway Island that has captured our hearts and imaginations in its powerful vortex. This time, if all goes well, we will witness and film a beautiful sight: the hatching of 300,000 baby albatrosses from their eggs. The adult albatrosses lay their eggs right on the ground, and as you know, they have no fear of humans, so we will be able to watch the little silver fluff balls emerging from their eggs from super close up. We are decked out with high-resolution camera and film gear with close-focus lenses, and lots of umbrellas and warm clothes, as the weather on Midway this time of year is stormy, wet, and cold.

Funding-wise, for this leg of the journey we are grateful to Koerner Camera in Seattle, the Compton Family Foundation in California, the Pax Natura Foundation in Salt Lake City and Aqua Hotels in Honolulu.  And as always, big love for the fab peeps at the US Fish and Wildlife Service on the island, all of whom have gone far above and beyond with their kind support of our vision.

Our A-team this trip includes Midway veterans Jan Vozenilek (Director of Photography for the film), Joe Schweers (Lead Camera and wildlife cinematography specialist), Jim Hurst (sound engineer, jib-arm expert, camera tech, and MacGyver-of-all-trades), Victoria Jordan (team poet, line producer, and my indispensable companion and soul mate).

We’ll be on the island Feb 2-16, and we plan on making lots of short behind-the-scenes videos to share with you during this trip, so stay tuned. Wish us luck, and looking forward to checking in from Midway!

~CJ

Video by Jan Vozenilek
Written by Victoria Sloan Jordan
Music by Christen Lien

Thank you for your patience as we have taken a few days to find our bearings and connect to the Internet.  We are astonished and delighted to find ourselves back here again on remote Midway Atoll.  The tiny island is now covered with several hundred thousand fledgling albatrosses inhabiting the paths, walkways, roads, meadows, and even the runway.

It’s hard to describe the complex mixture of feelings that arise in the presence of this incredible abundance of wildlife, especially as we are keenly aware of the devastating effects of the plastic that fills the stomachs of a huge percentage of these young birds.  One purpose of this leg of our journey is to witness their annual die-off, which will result in thousands of plastic-filled carcasses covering the ground as we saw when we visited here last September.

We’ve already begun to acquaint ourselves with the new stories that this chapter of our journey holds, and we look forward to sharing them with you over the next couple of weeks.  Thank you for joining us in this process.

With warm regards from Midway Atoll,

Chris, Victoria, Jan & Joe

Video by: Jan Vozenilek    Vimeo.com/JanVozenilek

Music by: Christen Lien  itsnotaviolin.com

See the area where this video was filmed on BlooSee’s satellite imagery.

As my team and I prepare to travel back to Midway Atoll, I cannot help but note the macabre juxtaposition of the environmental disaster that is happening in the Pacific Ocean, with the one that is happening in the Gulf of Mexico. The two phenomena are oddly parallel, involving (among other grotesque features) the deaths of untold numbers of sea birds, caused by millions of tons of our petroleum products that have poured into the ocean via our collective negligence. And in each case the birds can be viewed as messengers, serving as one small warning signal of a much larger calamity, with global consequences, in which our individual consumer lifestyles are unavoidably complicit.

My friend the artist Richard Lang says the opposite of beauty is not ugliness, but indifference. For me this means that to live ethical lives, we are called to turn toward the staggering enormity of human-caused catastrophes like the Pacific Garbage Patch and the Gulf Oil Disaster, opening our hearts to their horrors, and taking the risk that we might be overwhelmed by the potent feelings this process brings up in us. I can see no other acceptable approach, yet I fear that by dwelling on the awfulness of these tragedies—and the smorgasbord of others we survey in the news every day—we may lose our already tenuous connection with life’s beauty, mystery, humor, and joy. I want to learn to stand in the paradox of these conflicting realities, turning more fully toward each of them despite the anxiety involved, as they generate their respective teachings about what it means to live as an engaged citizen in our times.

These are some thoughts and intentions I carry in mind, as we journey back to Midway to document another chapter in the richly metaphoric intersection of the mythic albatross and the ten million tons of plastic pollution that swirl in the remote waters of the North Pacific. I invite you to follow our expedition as we blog from the island on midwayjourney.com, and as we release our photographs, writings, and the documentary film that will follow.

Happy July to all, with warm regards from Seattle,

~cj

I heard the sound of a motor approaching, and looked up to see one of the carts that the Thai maintenance crew uses to get around the island. The cart pulled up and stopped right next to me, and a Thai man stepped out. He was wearing canvas work coveralls and looked to be about fifty.

He smiled and made a slight bow, and after a short pause he pronounced two Thai syllables: “Kham… Wang.” Not sure what he meant, I repeated “Kham, Wang.” As I did that, he pointed to himself, and I realized he was telling me his name. So I pointed to myself and slowly said “Chris Jordan.” He repeated my name in a strong Thai accent: “Chizz Johdann.” I said “Kham Wang” again, trying to match his pronunciation of the nasal syllables.

Then Kham Wang noticed my camera, mounted on its tripod and aimed at the ground. He looked down and saw what I was photographing, and he gestured toward the bird with his hand. “Bebe,” he said in a quiet voice. “Bebe.”

It took me a moment to understand, and then I nodded and replied: “baby.”

We both stood there for a moment, looking down at the dead bird at our feet. Then Kham Wang looked back at me, and placed his hand on my shoulder, and said “Chizz Johdann.” I put my hand on his shoulder and gave my best “Kham Wang” once again. And with gentle smile, Kham Wang got back in his cart and drove on down the path.

~cj

Video by Bill Weaver, voice over by Chris Jordan. Music by Christen Lien.

Video by Bill Weaver

I thought I’d check in at the halfway point of our trip. First of all, greetings! I wish I could snap my fingers and you would all appear here with us.

In terms of my photographic work so far, my primary feeling is one of anxious urgency. What I am seeing through my viewfinder is amazing—everything I had hoped for, and much more. The albatross carcasses are astonishingly beautiful and visually complex, each one offering a slightly different view into the intricate architecture of these magnificent creatures. The pieces of plastic in their body cavities—cigarette lighters, bottle caps, pens, toothbrushes, and lots of other brightly colored plastic chunks, juxtapose like colors in a painting against the rich palettes of neutral tones in the birds’ decaying feathers and bones. Aesthetically, I hope that the images I am capturing will carry the same kind of uncomfortable desolate beauty that my other work has explored.

The part that makes me anxious is that I have no idea what is actually being recorded on my memory cards. I feel clumsy working with my new digital camera system. My hands lack fluency with the knobs and buttons; the menus don’t come naturally to my thought process; and I don’t know if I am getting the fine focus and the exposures correct. What I do know is that this equipment will produce outrageously high quality images if I get the settings right. Fingers crossed!

A couple of days ago I discovered a huge pile of several thousand albatross carcasses sequestered in a remote meadow. We figured they must be all the birds that had died around the living quarters, moved to a place where they can decompose naturally, away from the island village. The pile is a couple of feet deep and about twenty feet square, with thousands upon thousands of wings, skulls, rib cages, feathers, and bones, all mixed and permeated with a shocking amount of plastic junk.

It is a horrific and moving sight, evocative of images of mass graves from wars, more visually intense than anything I had expected to find here. I devoted a whole day to photographing the pile, and plan to return several times more. In terms of experiencing the depth of the tragedy we came here to witness, this is the heart of darkness of our journey. I feel overwhelmed and numbed by it, and I also sense that if there is any kind of breakthrough in our process to be attained on this trip, this pile represents the portal through which we must pass.

This Monday, September 21st, marks the autumnal equinox, a middle place in our yearly circuit around the sun, halfway between the days of longest darkness and longest light. On that day, at noon Midway time (four hours earlier than Pacific time), our team will return to the pile. Our shared intention is to connect as deeply as we can with the profound story that these birds have to tell. Please remember us on that day, and hold our process in your thoughts, as we will hold you in ours.

~cj

Video by Bill Weaver, voiceover by Chris Jordan

Forgive my croaky voice, and let Christen Lien’s beautiful viola take you into the spell of Midway. Thanks Christen!

Bill Weaver

-Bill Weaver

Voiceover by Chris Jordan

What hit me first when we landed was the incredible color of the lagoon that surrounds the island—a brilliant shade of impossibly luminescent turquoise, ringed by the deep sapphire blue of the Pacific all around. The color is so strong that it tints the clouds overhead a bizarre shade of blue-green, which if photographed would just look like a bad Photoshop job.

Yesterday evening the sky over the island was filled with more than a million petrels—gorgeous seabirds that wheel and dive like bats. It was an astonishing sight, especially as the evening gave way to a star-filled sky. We took a nighttime walk on the beach under the brightest view of the Milky Way that I have ever seen.

This morning I took off early by bike with camera gear on my back, and explored an abandoned World War II runway littered with the decaying carcasses of albatrosses—virtually all of their bellies filled with plastic junk. Talking and reading about it from home was one thing, but seeing it here in person carries a much different feeling. I made my first photograph, and felt myself sink one increment into the profound story that this island has to tell.

~cj

Greetings from 24,000 feet over the Pacific, where I am sitting with my team on a twin-engine Gulfstream government plane winging toward tiny Midway Atoll. Midway is the same distance from Honolulu, straight out over the ocean, as Los Angeles is from Dallas. Hawaii is already a thousand miles behind us, and for the last three hours of flying the sea has extended from horizon to horizon on all sides. A strange feeling of remoteness is beginning to seep in.

I am reminded of the day I flew to New Orleans ten weeks after Hurricane Katrina, loaded down with 8×10 camera equipment, having no idea what I would find, or whether my equipment would hold up, or whether I would take any good photographs. My intention that day was the same as it is  now: to go in with open mind, as free as possible from expectations, agendas, or pre-visualized images. That not as easy as it might sound, and for me it is anxiety-producing, but it also gives the best chance of acheiving what I hope for: to get out of my own way for long enough that the symbolic tragedy that is happening on Midway can speak for itself, on its own terms.

Thank you all for following our progress. We look forward to sharing our experiences with you.

~cj