Co-Founder | Global Justice Ecology Project
Co-Founder | Campaign to STOP GE Trees
Background
Orin Langelle co-founded Global Justice Ecology Project (GJEP) and serves as a consultant. He is also the Director of Langelle Photography and sits on the Steering Committee of the Campaign to STOP GE Trees, which he co-founded in 2004.
Aside from being an award-winning photojournalist and documentary photographer, he is also the author of Portraits of Struggle, a photographic book documenting interconnected global struggles for ecological, social, and economic justice across six continents and five decades.
Activism & Initiatives
- Engaged in social justice movements since the 1960s, starting with opposition to the Vietnam War.
- Earned a B.A. in Media and Communications from Webster University and trained as a photojournalist at the International Center of Photography under Cornell Capa (1977-1978).
- Led campaigns halting logging in the Shawnee National Forest, Illinois’ Trail of Tears State Forest, and Forest 44 in Saint Louis in the late 1980s.
- Co-founded the international Native Forest Network in Tasmania, Australia in 1992, and its Eastern North American Resource Center in Burlington, Vermont in 1993.
- Organized the First North American Temperate Forest Conference in 1993, attended by over 500 activists and Indigenous Peoples.
- Supported the Abenaki struggle for state recognition in Vermont and documented Cree resistance to Hydro-Quebec’s dam plans in James Bay, Quebec.
- Advocated for the indigenous Zapatistas in Chiapas, Mexico since 1994, documenting their resistance to NAFTA and Neoliberalism as well as their work to protect the Lacandon Jungle.
- Co-founded ACERCA: Action for Community and Ecology in the Regions of Central America in 1998.
- Coordinated protests against genetically engineered (GE) trees, including actions at industry conferences all over the world.
- Documented global protests, including at WTO, G8 and G20 conferences, World Bank meetings, the Free Trade Area of the Americas and the Iraq War.
- Co-founded Climate Justice Now! in Bali, Indonesia in 2007 and co-organized protests against UN conferences on climate change, forest conservation, and biodiversity from 2003 onwards.
- Founded the ¡Buen Vivir! Gallery for Contemporary Art in Buffalo, NY in 2014, showcasing his photographs of social and ecological struggles worldwide.
Awards
- Awarded the Exhibition Award at CEPA Gallery in Buffalo in 2016 for his solo show “Portraits of Struggle.”
- Adopted as an honorary member of the Saint Francis-Sokoki band of the Abenaki in 1992 for his support of their struggle for state recognition.
Photography Statement
Orin Langelle strives to captures “the decisive moment” in his photography, and aims to document social injustices linked to land struggles with the goal to inspire action.
Explore Orin Langelle’s work at PhotoLangelle.org.
