Yann Arthus Bertrand: Planet Home

Note the date in your agenda. On June 5 Yann Arthus-Bertrand will release his long-awaited first movie, Home, in what may be a landmark event for ecology awareness. On the same day the high-budget documentary opens in theaters in more than 80 countries, it will also be shown on French public television, on Air France flights and at multiple free public screenings throughout the world, including one in New York’s Central Park. DVD sales and free Internet streaming will be available immediately—all on June 5.

“This will be a media first,” beams the French photographer-turned-director in his office, a quiet bungalow in the Bois de Boulogne, on the western edge of Paris. “Our goal is to reach as many people as possible, perhaps hundreds of millions around the world, in less than 48 hours.”

The ambitious scope of the project is a mirror of the man. Arthus-Bertrand, a tireless activist for the “green” cause, was recently named Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Environment Program. Widely known for his Earth From Above books, which have sold more than 3 million copies worldwide, the 62-year-old photographer has always sought out challenges—traveling the planet in balloons and helicopters for more than a decade, for example, to capture the most unusual perspectives of the planet. His airborne adventures continue in motion-picture form with Home, which features a succession of magnificent aerial images shot in 54 different countries.

“I can assure you, the sights in this movie will blow your mind. Seen from above, even the ugly is beautiful, even garbage dumps are beautiful,” he notes. “But you also have to be careful. There is always a risk in wanting to aestheticize everything.”

“Only a few years left”
Yann Arthus-Bertrand, also known as YAB, knows his subject. Quick-tempered and energetic, the globe-trotting activist has spent more than 30 years taking pictures, often in the air but also at ground level—in Kenya, for example, where he spent three years with the lions; on the road with the Paris-Dakar off-road motor race; on the tennis courts of Roland-Garros.… What he’s learned from such wide experience, he says, is that he can’t be satisfied with just a great shot. “Beauty for beauty’s sake means nothing to me. A picture without a caption holds no interest for me. The emotion that photography can arouse should be a way to incite people to read the captions.”

Home is a perfect illustration. Using voiceover, Arthus-Bertrand delivers a detailed exposé of the ecological state of our planet, with legitimate concern. “We’ve been living for years in unprecedented comfort. But they have also been years of terrible waste. Do you realize that in rich countries, half the food goes into the garbage? Even oil, these ‘pockets of sun’ as we call oil deposits in the film, goes to waste every day. When you know how useful it is and how scarce the remaining reserves are, is it normal that a liter of oil costs less than a bottle of mineral water?”

The question is pressing, as are all the troubling data presented in the two-hour feature, which takes on global warming, deforestation, the extinction of animal species and climatic upheavals. At some point it seems fair to wonder: Is there any hope left? The ecologist grumbles behind his white moustache: “It’s much too late to be pessimistic. But there is definitely cause for alarm.”

Though he is in touch with numerous government officials—starting with President Nicolas Sarkozy, with whom he is quite close—Arthus-Bertrand is exasperated by their foot-dragging. “Everyone in the circles of power knows the figures, knows the grave danger of climate change, but nobody is willing to take the drastic steps that are needed. It’s not as if no one thinks about the future! People have pension funds, buy a house to leave to their children, save money for their children’s education. But when it comes to climate change they don’t give a damn. Nothing is done to prevent this looming disaster. I’m absolutely convinced that in 20 years there will be no more oil, which will turn life upside down in ways we can’t begin to imagine. We only have a few years left to learn how to consume differently, to use more environment-friendly products. After that, it will be too late.”

A deeper social agenda
A longtime friend of fellow activists Nicolas Hulot in France and Al Gore in the United States, Arthus-Bertrand has more recently become a spokesperson for various NGOs working in conjunction with his own foundation, Good Planet. Their projects promote different approaches to environmentalism, including a deeper social agenda. “When I was 20,” he says, “I was mostly interested in animals, in nature. Ecological awareness was slowly building, but it was mostly focused on other species. Now we know that humans above all are really at the center of all this.”

Last winter Arthus-Bertrand staged the huge and highly successful exhibition 6 Billion Others in the Grand Palais in Paris. In a handful of yurts installed under the vast glass roof, the public could watch video interviews with thousands of people from countries all over the world, talking about their experiences and beliefs.

Regrettably, Arthus-Bertrand was not one of the interviewees. But in private, this “green businessman” admits he is still struggling to find the sense of his life. “The meaning of life is in the seeking of it. I look for it, and I become a better person,” he says with a smile. “Succeeding as a human being isn’t the same as success in one’s professional life. It has taken me years to understand that.” Once a highly individualistic self-made man, Arthus-Bertrand seems to have taken stock of his position and decided to use his renown—he is one the most beloved and respected figures in France—to serve new causes.

Will projects like Home make a difference? “Our work is to bring ecology to the core of our consciousness,” he affirms. “I know we all have in us a little piece of the solution.”

Home’s website, Good Planet’s website

 

Originally published in the June 2009 issue of France Today.