Boxing Outside the Think | Michael Forster Rothbart | TEDxFulbright

This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences. In her book The Sense of Wonder, environmentalist Rachel Carson wrote, "For most of us, knowledge of our world comes largely through sight, yet we look about with such unseeing eyes that we are partially blind." How can we learn to see without filters, she asks, like a child? Like a visionary? Through photos from his Fulbright in Chernobyl, Michael weaves two threads: creativity and photography as social witness to explore larger questions.


Michael Forster Rothbart had a Fulbright from the US to Ukraine, 2007. Photojournalist. After a nuclear disaster, most people flee. Michael asks for special access to the impact zone. Focusing his lens on the "human impacts of environmental contamination," he decamped to Chernobyl and Fukushima to tell the story of those who remained. All the while daring us to answer the underlying question: "Would you stay?"


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