EcoPortraits:
Recognizing Environmental Difference Makers
Photography exhibit honors environmental leaders at Santa Barbara’s 40th Anniversary Earth Day Celebration
Selma Rubin, community activist and mother to a movement
In 1969 a community confronted an environmental catastrophe, an oil spill, which sparked the birth of Earth Day a year later. To celebrate 40 years of solutions and forward thinking, Mercury Press International is proud to feature the work of photographer Isaac Hernández with journalists Carlos Fresneda and Nancy Black in an exhibition of photographic profiles of environmental leaders at the 40th Anniversary Celebration of Earth Day, sponsored by the Community Environmental Council (CEC), on April 17 and 18, in Alameda Park in Santa Barbara.
An audience of 20,000 is expected to attend the Earth Day Festival over the course of the weekend. Five years in the making, this is a fitting world premiere for the show that will travel to Los Angeles, New York, and Madrid. The exhibit features the ordinary people who, confronted with the natural disaster of the oil spill, accomplished extraordinary things and started a culture shift: among them Selma Rubin, Paul Rellis, Marc McGinnes, and Bud Bottoms. These activists share the walls with other like Andy Lipkis (TreePeople), Van Jones (Green Jobs for All), Michael Pollan (author, Food Rules), Annie Leonard (author, Story of Stuff), Lester Brown (Earth Policy Institute), Sylvia Earle (oceanographer), Annie Novak (Rooftop Farms), Eric Sanderson (creator of the Mannahatta Project), Richard Heinberg (Post Carbon Institute) and Paul Stamets (Fungi Perfecti), among others.
These leaders embrace a bold future vision, dedicating their efforts towards the fulfillment of seemingly-impossible goals. This exhibit aims to share their inspiration and solutions for a sustainable world. Mercury Press is honored to partner with the Community Environmental Council in acknowledging their profound contributions.
Mercury Press International has been serving magazines, newspapers, online periodicals, book publishers, commercial and private clients for almost two decades, with text, editing, photography, video and promotions. Their articles have been published in over 30 countries, and translated to over 20 languages. Formed by Isaac Hernández and Nancy Black in Santa Barbara in 1991, Mercury Press serves as US correspondents for El Mundo, the second largest newspaper in Spain and the world’s largest Spanish language periodical, with 23 million readers worldwide. Carlos Fresneda is the US Bureau Chief for El Mundo, and they’ve been collaborating on the Difference Makers project for over five years, featuring social justice, arts, and environmental leaders, and from which this EcoPortraits exhibit was born.
Sylvia Earle, oceanographer extraordinaire
