Using photography to express sustainability: ERS 318

ERS 318 Photography for Sustainability wrapped up another successful Open House on December 3, 2024. It started out in 2016 as a course for SERS students, but as the years passed, I’ve realized that to some degree, all UW students are photographers, and certainly they’re all consumers of photographs. At the same time, through many conversations with students from across campus, I’ve noticed that the concerns that motivate SERS students are shared by students in many other programs across campus.

Therefore, in 2024 I opened ERS 318 to students from across UW. Twenty students took the course this year, drawn from five of the six UW faculties, and from all five academic units in the Faculty of Environment.

At the start of term, I described the course as a “big group project”. Students came up with their own sustainability project ideas, but they did it together, in a collaborative environment based on mutual support and feedback. Along the way, they learned or strengthened their digital photography, editing, printing and image-based storytelling skills.

The photography projects the students created in 2024 reflect the many sustainability themes we address in the Faculty of Environment, including ecology, climate change, transportation, waste management, energy use, food production, water management, housing and urban development, consumerism, and our relationship with nature.

Each year, the course ends with an Open House where the students spend a couple hours talking to visitors about their work. I always look forward to a visit from retired SERS professor Greg Michalenko, who I’m sure has been to every ERS 318 Open House since the first one!

The course won’t be offered in 2025, so we took extra care to make sure that the projects mounted on the walls in the SERS hallways will stay up for at least two years!