Bear Witness

My dear friend and world-renowned photographer, Chris Jordan, fell in love with albatrosses. He spent five years documenting dying baby seabirds filled with plastic on Midway Island in the Pacific. We were traveling through the Patagonian Fjords on a sailboat together and each time he would see an albatross soar by he would begin to cry, his heart overflowing with love for a feathered individual he had never met. I asked him what his work had done to protect the seabirds from plastic waste, what was the impact of the heart-wrenching years spent watching baby birds die? He told me sometimes all we can do is bear witness. Sadness is love in disguise. If I can do nothing more than bear witness and feel the sadness of losing our planet to fossil fuels, overfishing and pollution, so be it. I would rather tell the stories of the dying friends I haven’t met yet than look away. As Chris and I sailed through the fjords together, from then on, each time an albatross flew past us, we would hold each other on the deck and sob tears of pure and absolute love.

I bear witness to beauty, I bear witness to loss. 

Taylor Bratton