‘Try to live with as less as possible’

A French photographer flies on hot air balloons and records how a ravaged planet called earth prepares for apocalypse now!
Sumiran Preet Kaur Delhi

"An unknown world lies ahead in the next 10 to 15 years," said Yann Arthus Bertrand, 63, French photographer and documentary filmmaker. Photographing the earth from helicopters and hot air balloons and making documentaries on global warming made him see that the world is changing drastically. "The quantity of information in circulation has never been greater. All of this is positive. The negative aspect is that despite knowing what is happening and being aware of the irreversible change we are bringing in nature, we are not acting fast enough."

For more than 10 years, Yann Arthus Bertrand has been drawing the portrait of the planet with his aerial pictures and films. These years of travel have given Bertrand a global vision. "I realised how fast the world was changing due to human activities and was certain that it was heading in a bad direction," he says.  It was then that he realised the power of pictures to convince people to change. He felt that people will believe what they see.

He was right. In 2009, he released his documentary, Home. The film, entirely composed of aerial shots of various spots on earth, shows the diversity of life and how societies are threatening the ecological balance of the planet. The movie was released simultaneously in cinemas, on television and You Tube on June 5, 2009, the World Environment Day, in 181 countries.

The following Sunday, the 'ecologist 'parties in the European Union elections made an unexpected high. The people wanted change. Beautiful aerial photography, an omnipresent music score and great post production details makes this an extraordinary movie. "It is an educational movie," he says.

Bertrand, when he was 30, went to Kenya to work in a national park. He also lived among the Massai tribes for three years to study the behaviour of lions and took daily pictures. It is here when he  discovered his new passion for landscape pictures from hot air balloons. He came back to France in 1981 and became an international reporter and photographer, specialising in documentaries on sports, wildlife and aerial photography. He also founded the Altitude Agency in 1991, the word's first press agency and images bank on aerial photography. In 1994, he did more research on planet earth. In 2005, he founded the international environment organisation 'Good Planet', his 'best time'.

 "While making one of my films, The Earth from the Sky, I often asked myself what I could learn from men and women I glimpsed below. I dreamt of understanding their words, feelings and concerns that linked us. From up there, the earth looks like an immense area to be shared," he said. During shooting he felt that something was missing in his films - sound, words, the people's language. He started interviewing people and launched the project - 6 Billion Others.

With this, the cameraman travelled to 75 countries in four years to interview the inhabitants of earth. The '6 Billion Others' project records testimonies of people in their original language. "In many struggles, like the struggle against poverty and climate change, we need small community efforts. We cannot ignore what links us to each other and the responsibility this implies. There are more than 6 billion people on the earth and there will be no sustainable development if we cannot live together. Each one of us has to reach out and listen to other people and contribute to the life of 6 billion others," he feels.