Monfort Professor-In-Residence, Award-Winning Photographer James Balog to Speak at Colorado State University Nov. 7-8

Note to Reporters: James Balog photos are available with the news release at http://www.news.colostate.edu.

Science meets art in stunning images as Monfort Professor-in-Residence James Balog comes to Colorado State University Nov. 7 and 8 to lecture on his experiences photographing nature and documenting climate change.

The first lecture will be on Monday, Nov. 7, at 7 p.m. in the Behavioral Sciences Building Auditorium, Room 131. Titled “When Mountains Move: Seeing Is Believing,” Balog’s first lecture will take the audience on a visual journey of the planet’s changes, especially the retreat of glaciers worldwide.

Shocked by the changes he saw while shooting the June 2007 National Geographic cover story on melting glaciers, Balog, who has a graduate degree in geomorphology, initiated the most wide-ranging glacier study ever conducted. Using innovative time-lapse, video, and conventional photography, he has been capturing images at sites in Alaska, Greenland, Iceland, Canada, Bolivia, the Alps and the northern U.S. Rockies.

The result, the Extreme Ice Survey, offers a look at the impact that climate change is having on the world’s glaciers.

The second lecture, “Portraits from the Wild? Rare Animals, Colossal Trees, Raging Waters,” will be Tuesday, Nov. 8, at 5 p.m., also in the Behavioral Sciences Building Auditorium, Room 131. This presentation will be an overview of Balog’s 30-year career photographing the “contact zones” between humans and the natural world, especially endangered animals.

“As an adventurer, scientist and artist, Balog has changed the way photographers and other visual artists have looked at animals, trees and the natural world,” said John Calderazzo, professor of English and co-director of Changing Climates @ CSU. “His ground-breaking work is amazingly beautiful and highly thought-provoking.”

Balog’s honors include the 2010 Heinz Award and Missouri School of Journalism’s Honor Medal for Distinguished Service. His photography has appeared widely in prestigious galleries and in National Geographic, Vanity Fair, Outside, and other publications including American Photo.

Aside from his public presentations for Changing Climates @ CSU, Balog will visit classes in four departments – Atmospheric Science, Soil & Crop Sciences, Art, and Geosciences – plus conduct a colloquium with the Department of Atmospheric Science.

Sponsors for the event include the Monfort Excellence Fund; the Center for Multiscale Modeling of Atmospheric Processes, or CMMAP, in the Department of Atmospheric Science; the School of Global Environmental Sustainability or SoGES; and the College of Liberal Arts.

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