MIDDLEBURY — James Balog, the famed photographer featured in the highly acclaimed climate change documentary “Chasing Ice,” will visit Middlebury College to present a screening of the film on Wednesday, April 24, at 7 p.m. in Dana Auditorium. Balog will give a brief presentation of his work before the movie is shown and be available for questions afterward. The event is free and open to the public.
“For a long time, global warming moved a little too slowly to be easily seen, but no more,” said Jon Isham, director of Middlebury’s Environmental Studies Program and faculty director of Middlebury Center for Social Entrepreneurship. “This movie demonstrates what Middlebury’s environmental studies faculty and students have been writing and talking about for years: the rapid rise of climate change as not just a crisis, but a context, a window on the world.” 
For three decades, Balog has been recognized as a leader in photographing and interpreting the natural environment. He is an avid mountaineer with a graduate degree in geography and geomorphology.
To reveal the impact of climate change, Balog founded the Extreme Ice Survey (EIS), the most wide-ranging, ground-based photographic study of glaciers ever conducted. The project is featured in “Chasing Ice,” which won dozens of awards at film festivals worldwide, including the award for Excellence in Cinematography at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. National Geographic showcased EIS in its June 2007 and June 2010 issues and it was featured in the 2009 NOVA/PBS documentary, “Extreme Ice.” Balog’s film was also on the 2013 Academy Award shortlist for documentaries.
According to Scholar in Residence Bill McKibben, “This is the most important climate change movie since ‘An Inconvenient Truth,’ and it’s far more powerful cinematically.”
Balog has been recognized with the Heinz Award; the Missouri School of Journalism’s Honor Medal for Distinguished Service; the Aspen Institute’s Visual Arts and Design Award; and the Galen and Barbara Rowell Award for the Art of Adventure. He has received the Leica Medal of Excellence, the International League of Conservation Photographers Award and the North American Nature Photography Association’s “Outstanding Photographer of the Year” award. He was named “Person of the Year” for 2011 by PhotoMedia magazine.
The author of eight books, Balog most recently published “ICE: Portraits of Vanishing Glaciers” in 2012. Other books include “Extreme Ice Now: Vanishing Glaciers and Changing Climate: A Progress Report,” “Tree: A New Vision of the American Forest,” “Wildlife Requiem,” “Anima,” and “Survivors: A New Vision of Endangered Wildlife,” which was hailed as a major conceptual breakthrough in nature photography.
Additionally, Balog’s work is in dozens of public and private art collections, including the Museum of Fine Arts Houston; the Corcoran Gallery; the Denver Art Museum and the Gilman Paper Company. It has been extensively published in most of the world’s major pictorial magazines including The New Yorker, National Geographic, Life, American Photo, Vanity Fair, Sierra, Audubon, and Outside. In 1996, he was the first photographer ever commissioned by the U.S. Postal Service to create a series of stamps. The documentary film, “A Redwood Grows in Brooklyn,” explores his thoughts about art, nature and perception.
This event is sponsored by The Franklin Environmental Center at Hillcrest and the Middlebury Center for Social Entrepreneurship.
For more information, contact Janet Wiseman at 802-443-5710 or [email protected].