America's Endangered Coasts

America’s Endangered Coasts: Photographs from Texas to Maine is a pioneering and thought-provoking photographic survey of coastal areas of the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts of the United States that are already threatened by a rising sea. Using a topographic aesthetic that combines straightforward, highly detailed color photographs with GPS locations and elevations above sea level for each site, this book photographically responds to low-lying areas that are frequently over-developed and vulnerable to high tides and storms such as Hurricanes Katrina, Irene, and Sandy. This book contains 168 color photographs and two essays, one by Liz Wells, a prominent British writer who offers a photo/art perspective of the work, and one by Dr. James E. Hansen, based on his prophetic scientific understandings of the climate-change crisis and some ways to address it.

Current scientific projections conclusively show that the future of civilization along the world’s coasts is at stake due to the climate-change crisis. According to the latest conservative projections, Earth’s sea levels will rise by no less than three to four feet within a century and very possibly much more. This amount of sea-rise, compounded by hurricanes and storm surges, will threaten and make unsustainable large portions of the coastal areas of the Gulf of Mexico, from Texas to Florida, and the Atlantic seaboard, from Florida to Maine. All coastal areas of the world, in fact, are at risk, since nearly half of the world’ population lives along and near coastal regions.

America’s Endangered Coasts promises to make an important contribution to the world of photographic art and to the public’s awareness of climate change and its impact on everyday life. The book serves as both a warning of things to come and a photographic document of lasting historical value, since many areas that Ganis has photographed will be underwater by 2100. It is the first book of its kind to offer such comprehensive geographic coverage of representative areas along the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts that are threatened now and in the future by a rising sea.


“The coasts we’ve always known are shifting before our eyes. John Ganis’s fine book helps us with the job of paying witness; may it spur us to the job of preventing further damage.” — BILL MCKIBBEN, SCHUMANN DISTINGUISHED SCHOLAR IN ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES AT MIDDLEBURY COLLEGE AND AUTHOR OF EARTH AND THE END OF NATURE


“John Ganis has long been dedicated to exposing how the United States uses and abuses its lands. His photographs are clear and moving, putting us in places we have never been and encouraging us to see them. America’s Endangered Coasts constitutes another powerful wake-up call from the front lines of climate-change awareness.” — LUCY R. LIPPARD, AUTHOR OF THE LURE OF THE LOCAL AND UNDERMINING: A WILD RIDE THROUGH LAND USE, POLITICS, AND ART IN THE CHANGING WEST