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Christensen hopes to show the effects of climate change through photos like the one above.
As a veteran supermodel, Helena Christensen knows she doesn’t have to do much more than just sit back and look pretty. Still, she wants to make a difference. The celebrity model traveled to Peru recently, armed with a camera and a team of volunteers from Oxfam, to document the particularly devastating effects of climate change upon the country’s people.
When Oxfam International, an organization dedicated to finding lasting solutions to poverty and injustice, announced its project, Christensen, whose mother is Peruvian, was happy to jump aboard. She traveled to the South American country to see the effects of global warming first hand, and she came back with a series of photographs documenting lives on the verge of drought and famine.
“Whole communities are losing their main source of income,” she said, referring to a severe lack of water which would force people to move into big cities. “These cultures will disappear,” she said. “And it’s really sad, because it’s such a special part of South America.”
An exhibition of Christensen’s work is currently on display at London’s Proud Gallery, just days before an important series of climate talks in Copenhagen. Christensen hopes her photos of impoverished rural farmers, children and Quechua people of the Peruvian hillsides will encourage politicians to take a tougher stance against greenhouse gas emissions.