Bio:

 

Michael O. Snyder (b. 1981) is a photographer and filmmaker documenting the climate crisis and related social-environmental issues. In addition to creating visual stories, he is deeply interested in how our narratives can help drive social impact.

 

His work has been featured by outlets such as National Geographic, The Guardian, and The Washington Post. He's been honored by awards such as the Portrait of Humanity Award (Winner), the Decade of Change Award (Winner), The Welcome Prize for Photography (Shortlist), the LensCulture Portrait Awards (Finalist), and the Visualizing Climate Change Award (Winner). Snyder is a Pulitzer Grantee, a Climate Journalism Fellow at the Bertha Foundation, a member of the Society of Environmental Journalists, and an Assistant Professor of Visual Communication at Syracuse University's Newhouse School in New York. 

Through his production company, Interdependent Pictures, he has directed films in the Arctic, the Amazon, the Himalaya, and East Africa. His films have been selected to over 60 festivals, have taken home numerous awards, have been sponsored by companies such as Sony and GoPro, and have been distributed by outlets such as New Day Films and Films for Change. Michael often lectures on visual storytelling and its potential as a tool for social impact. He has been a featured speaker at the United Nations Climate Conference and has lectured at universities such as Yale, Columbia, and the Alfred Wegener Institute. In 2022, the University of Edinburgh named him one of its most “influential alumni making a significant contribution to climate science and justice.”

​

An adventurer at heart, Michael has hiked the Appalachian and John Muir Trails, cycled across Europe, and ridden trains through Siberia. Originally from a small town in Appalachia, Snyder has lived around the world including long-term stints in Scotland, Japan, Hawaii, and New Zealand. Michael holds an MSc in Environmental Sustainability from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, where he was a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar, and a BSc from Dickinson College, Pennsylvania.

​

Artist Statement:

​

I grew up on twelve acres of reclaimed mining land in rural Appalachia, a young witness to the innumerable scars that industrial extraction can imprint on both lives and landscapes. Consequently, I trained to be an environmental scientist, a career that I believed could help bind the wounds of my home and contribute to resolving the core crisis of our times: global climate change. However, my graduate research into social models of behavior change lead me to a realization that has permanently altered my working life: the real power to drive durable cultural change lies not within the purely descriptive faculties of science, but in crafting informed narratives that directly challenge dominant paradigms and provide the requisite tools, mechanisms, and visions to transform it. In short, reason alone does not a revolution make. We have to learn to tell a better story.

​

Today I work as a multi-disciplinary visual storyteller because I believe in the power of narratives to shift what it means to live well on this planet without destroying it.  I am driven to explore the relationship between environment and culture and how we can produce visual stories that lead to durable social change.