A small mountain town perched on the chilly Alaskan coast, Cordova offers picturesque landscapes, fishing, hiking, towering glaciers, and an abundance of wildlife. Each year the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication’s Science and Memory program takes a select handful of students to explore and investigate climate change and its effect on the people, animals, and ecosystems of Cordova.
The groups of students spend 11 days documenting everything from the different types of bears to the ways that Cordova’s people are affected by drastic climate change in the area. While in Alaska, the groups of students created stories through photography, videography, and writing. SOJC professors Dan and Deborah Morrison lead the trip every year and have been taking students up to Alaska since 2014.
The 2019 participants produced stories focusing on the effects of climate change on dusky geese and bald eagles, the Copper River Delta, halibut fishing, and the wetlands within the delta. A collection of six of the images that Denise Silfee and Rhys Marshall captured while on the trip are currently on display at the Aperture Gallery in the Erb Memorial Union on the UO Campus.
Despite the fact that each photographer focused on different aspects of Cordova life while on the trip, the images within this exhibit paint a vivid and cohesive picture of Alaskan wildlife at many different angles.
Silfee is a second year graduate student studying journalism. Marshall is in his junior year of undergraduate studies and is majoring in both advertising and journalism with an environmental studies minor. Each of them walked into the project with a shared goal of documenting scientific journalism, as well as sharing the stories of Cordova.
Marshall’s main focus was on the relationship between dusky geese and bald eagles and how climate change has affected their environments. He explored the Copper River Delta and monitored the geese and eagles in their natural habitats. One of his images in the exhibit captures a stoic bald eagle perched on a tree; the eagle looks as if it is looking directly at you with ferocity.
“One of the days I borrowed my professor’s really high powered lens and as we were driving up the road we spotted these eagles in the trees. So I grabbed my camera, pointed the lens up to the tree, and the eagle was staring directly at me. Normally when you photograph wildlife you expect it to be looking off into the distance but it was looking right at me. It was such a weird moment,” said Marshall.
Silfee focused on a myriad of topics while on the trip and met many Cordova locals, saw different bear species, and captured images of different wildlife. She was initially set up to spend some time with fish biologists up-stream about 42 miles down the Copper River, but when high water levels struck the area, the project was canceled. “I like to say that I had a climate change story literally canceled because of climate change,” said Silfee. She made the most of her time there despite her initial plans being canceled and discovered other stories along the way.
“I mostly spent my days walking around different areas of Cordova talking to as many people as I could find. I found opportunities just by talking to the people I met like I got to go on a fishing trip with the native tribe of Eyak,” said Silfee.
The overall goal of the SOJC’s Science and Memory program is to allow students to have an experiential learning opportunity that takes them deep into the field of science journalism. They also hope to inform the public through their storytelling and inform the world of the very real depictions of climate change in Cordova. “It’s [about] communicating how climate change impacts the ecosystems in the area and its communicating that to people who would otherwise not know about it,” said Marshall.
This exhibit not only shares some of the fantastic work that the Science and Memory program creates, but also puts a very real and memorable face to climate change’s effects on the tiny Alaskan town of Cordova.
This exhibit will be up in the Aperture Gallery of the EMU until Feb. 12, and there will be a closing reception to meet the artists from 6-7 p.m. at the exhibit on the 12th as well.
“I think this is such a valuable experience because of the exposure you get to different aspects of the field of journalism that are based on science communication and the modern age of the climate crisis and how the field of journalists can actually provide a beneficial help into aiding these things,” said Marshall.
