Climate imagery and film ethics: how culture confronts crisis

The power—and limits—of climate imagery

The Summit Photo 2026 exhibition, currently on display in London, offers a stark visual reckoning with the climate crisis. Curated from global submissions, the collection presents images that transcend traditional environmental photography: a pig fleeing floodwaters in Bangladesh, seabirds grounded by plastic-filled stomachs, and communities navigating rising waters in the UK. According to The Guardian, which featured the exhibition, these works "force viewers to confront the tangible consequences of inaction"—not through abstract data, but through visceral, human-scale storytelling.

Yet the exhibition also raises uncomfortable questions about representation. Whose stories are being told, and by whom? The images, while powerful, often originate from Western photographers documenting crises in the Global South. This dynamic risks reinforcing a narrative of passive victims rather than active resilience—a tension that mirrors broader debates about climate journalism and its ethical responsibilities.

When film sets become political battlegrounds

Christopher Nolan’s latest epic, Odyssey, has sparked a fierce debate about the ethics of location scouting in conflict zones. The film, shot partly in Western Sahara—a territory occupied by Morocco since 1975—has drawn criticism from Sahrawi activists, including filmmaker Mohamed Sleiman Labat. In a Guardian op-ed, Labat argues that Nolan’s decision to film in the region "helps erase the brutal reality of occupation," where Sahrawi journalists and artists face imprisonment for documenting their own stories.

Nolan’s team has not publicly addressed the controversy, but the backlash highlights a growing demand for accountability in the film industry. As climate change and geopolitical conflicts increasingly shape production choices, filmmakers face pressure to weigh artistic ambition against ethical consequences. The question lingers: can a blockbuster shot in an occupied territory ever be apolitical?

The quiet resistance of environmental storytelling

While high-profile controversies dominate headlines, smaller cultural projects are quietly redefining how the UK engages with environmental crises. The Earth Photo awards, featured in last week’s Guardian, showcase works that blend art and activism—from aerial shots of rewilding projects in Scotland to intimate portraits of farmers adapting to drought. Unlike the Summit Photo exhibition, these works often center local voices, offering a counterpoint to the "disaster porn" that can dominate climate imagery.

Meanwhile, in Birmingham, a revival of Sweeney Todd at the Rep Theatre subverts expectations by framing its gothic tale of urban decay as a metaphor for environmental neglect. Director Joe Murphy’s staging, praised for its "dark humor and social bite," suggests that even classic texts can be repurposed to reflect contemporary anxieties. As one critic noted, "The show’s themes of exploitation and waste feel eerily prescient in a country grappling with food poverty and landfill crises."

What’s at stake

These cultural moments reveal a paradox: as the climate crisis accelerates, so does the urgency to document it—but the tools of representation are themselves under scrutiny. Photography and film, once seen as neutral mediums, are increasingly recognized as sites of power, where choices about framing, access, and narrative shape public understanding.

For UK audiences, this shift offers an opportunity to move beyond passive consumption. Exhibitions like Summit Photo and Earth Photo challenge viewers to ask not just what they’re seeing, but who is telling the story—and why. Meanwhile, controversies like Nolan’s Odyssey force a reckoning with the ethics of cultural production in an era of global inequality.

The question for 2026 is not whether culture can reflect the climate crisis, but whether it can do so without reproducing the very hierarchies that fuel it. The answer may lie in the quieter works: the local photographers, the community theater projects, and the artists who refuse to let the crisis be reduced to spectacle.