一位飛行的攝影師帶著敬畏和悲傷俯視著地球

一位飛行的攝影師帶著敬畏和悲傷俯視著地球

Strap in, and "your body becomes the fuselage" — and you are the pilot. Your knees dangle into open air.

系好安全帶，“你的身體就成了機身”——而你就是飛行員。你的膝蓋懸在空中。

For 15 years, the contraption, called a motorized paraglider, has taken photographer George Steinmetz across 25 different countries. From airport to airport, Steinmetz carried his personal aircraft, which could be disassembled and stashed in three bags, each weighing about 50 pounds.

15年來，這個被稱為“機動滑翔傘”的裝置，已經(jīng)把攝影師喬治·斯坦梅茨帶到了25個不同的國家。從一個機場到另一個機場，斯坦梅茨都帶著他的私人飛機，這些飛機可以拆卸，裝在3個袋子里，每個袋子重約50磅(約合48公斤)。

Launching himself over remote swaths of desert, stark Arctic terrains and cheek-by-jowl shorelines, Steinmetz has documented, from the sky, the way human activity has shaped Earth. The result is The Human Planet: Earth at the Dawn of the Anthropocene, a photographic record of our planet in the anthropocene age — a word that refers to the mark humans have made on the global landscape ("anthropos" is Greek for human). The accompanying text is by science writer Andrew Revkin.

斯坦梅茨從遙遠的沙漠、荒蕪的北極地形和緊挨在一起的海岸線上縱身一躍，從空中記錄了人類活動塑造地球的方式。結(jié)果就是《人類的星球:人類之初的地球》，這是一部關(guān)于人類世時代我們星球的攝影記錄——這個詞指的是人類在全球景觀上留下的印記(“anthropos”在希臘語中是“人類”的意思)。本文由科學(xué)作家安德魯·瑞凱撰寫。

NPR spoke to Steinmetz about what it was like to glide over some of the most isolated regions in the world — and about the overwhelming signs he saw of humanity's footprint.

美國國家公共電臺采訪了斯坦梅茨，他談到在世界上最與世隔絕的地區(qū)上空滑翔是什么感覺，以及他看到的人類足跡的壓倒性跡象。

What inspired you to begin working on

是什么激勵你開始從事這項工作的?

The book came out of a project I did for the New York Times Magazine. They asked me to go and photograph climate change on all seven continents from the air.

這本書來源于我為《紐約時報》雜志做的一個項目。他們讓我從空中拍攝七大洲的氣候變化。

And it made me think more globally than I tend to do, and it filled in a lot of gaps I had in my coverage of the planet. After that was done, I decided it would be interesting to go back through my archive and kind of reinterpret what I've been seeing for the past 30 years, looking at our fragile planet in a different way.

它讓我比以前更全球化地思考，它填補了我在地球報道方面的許多空白。在那之后，我決定回顧一下我的檔案，重新解釋一下我在過去30年里所看到的，用另一種方式來觀察我們這個脆弱的星球，這將是一件很有趣的事情。

You'd been taking aerial photos for National Geographic as well.

你也為國家地理雜志拍過航拍照片。

I've been working for National Geographic for over 30 years, and [aerial photos] were always the most fun and exciting part of the story.

我為《國家地理》工作了30多年，航拍照片一直是這個故事中最有趣、最激動人心的部分。

I started doing that more and more, until finally, I wanted to do a story in the Sahara and realized I had to bring my own aircraft because there were no helicopters or planes to hire in these [areas of] Niger and Chad where I wanted to go. I had to learn how to fly my own thing.

我開始越來越多地這樣做，直到最后，我想在撒哈拉沙漠做一個報道，我意識到我必須自己帶飛機，因為在我想去的尼日爾和乍得這些地區(qū)沒有直升機或飛機可以租用。我得學(xué)會自己開飛機。

Could you tell us a bit about what it was like taking pictures aerially?

你能告訴我們一些空中拍照是什么感覺嗎?

It's kind of personal because your body is the aircraft. It is some physical risk to go and see the world. You have to have to be fairly committed to taking the picture. And that made it a much richer experience. Now, I used drones a lot.

因為你的身體就是飛機。去看世界是有身體風(fēng)險的。你必須非常認真地拍下這張照片。這使它成為一個更豐富的體驗?，F(xiàn)在，我經(jīng)常使用無人機。

A lot of the work was done with a motorized paraglider, which is the world's lightest and slowest motorized aircraft. You run to take off and land. It's a very personal kind of aerial photography, [because] there's no barrier between you and the outside.

很多工作都是用電動滑翔傘完成的，這是世界上最輕和最慢的電動飛機。你跑著起飛和降落。這是一種非常個人化的航拍，因為在你和外界之間沒有障礙。

You have to watch out for your knees getting in the picture.

你得小心你的膝蓋進入畫面。

I had a lot of unusual experiences flying in very rare places — like getting caught in sandstorms, some bad crashes. You have a lot of really epic moments where you see things that no one's ever seen before.

我有很多不尋常的經(jīng)歷，在非常罕見的地方飛行，比如被沙塵暴，一些嚴重的墜毀。你有很多真正史詩般的時刻，在那里你看到了以前沒人見過的東西。

What were some of those epic moments?

那些史詩般的時刻是什么?

In the empty quarter of Saudi Arabia, [I flew over] the world's largest sand sea. It's about the size of France, Belgium and Holland combined without a single permanent point of water or habitation, and it's [practically] just an endless field of orange sand dunes. You feel like you're hallucinating out there.

在沙特阿拉伯空曠的地區(qū)，我飛越了世界上最大的沙海。它的面積相當(dāng)于法國、比利時和荷蘭的總和，沒有一個固定的水源和居住點，它(實際上)只是一片無邊無際的橙色沙丘。你會覺得自己在那里產(chǎn)生了幻覺。

I also had a really amazing experience flying in the High Andes in the Altiplano of Bolivia. There's a salt lake there called the Salar de Uyuni, the world's largest salt flat. It's very surreal, especially in the spring when the fringes of it are covered in water. You feel like it's like something out of a dream. It's really beautiful.

我還在玻利維亞高原的安第斯山脈上有過一次非常棒的飛行經(jīng)歷。那里有一個鹽湖，叫做烏尤尼鹽湖，是世界上最大的鹽沼。這是非常超現(xiàn)實的，尤其是在春天，當(dāng)它的邊緣被水覆蓋的時候。你感覺就像做夢一樣。真的很漂亮。