Biography:
Sofia Aldinio is an Argentine documentary photographer and multimedia storyteller. She is currently based in Portland, Maine. Her work uses collaborative practices to tell stories about home, immigration, climate change, and preserving natural and...
MORE
Butterfly milkweed seed pods are collected from Jeremiah garden, to clean and store the seeds. This type of Milkweed has been extirpated from Marine ecosystems, and many residents are now growing them in their gardens. South Portland United States
Rebekah Lowell searches for monarchs' butterfly eggs at the start of the monarch season in Biddeford, Maine. Rebekah is a single mother, butterfly advocate, and a survivor of domestic abuse. Her life has been forever altered by this trauma. She shares, “The innocent child that once roamed the wildflower fields is gone. My heart, though, has found a way to be resilient, and though it bears scars, it is strong. Biddeford United States
Butterfly milkweed is contained in a net to prevent caterpillars from catching a disease, at the Mahoosuc Land Trust during Monarch Festival in Bethel, Maine.
Community advocate for butterflies, Rebekah Lowell, turns her office into a terrarium habitat during the summer and fall. She goes out in the fields daily collecting eggs, and caterpillars. She feeds them with milkweed and once they become butterflies she tags and releases them. Biddeford United States
Mother and daughter, Kathy Pollard and Ann Pollard-Ranco from the Penobscot Tribe, teach a workshop to non-indigenous women about traditional indigenous ecological knowledge, and climate change mitigation strategies, Cape Elizabeth, Maine. The pair specializes in restoration ecology projects with a focus on indigenous sustainability practices. The Penobscot tribe lost access to their native land through colonization, so restoring native habitat has been a welcome opportunity to reconnect with the original Penobscot homeland. Every year, The Wild Seed organization gifts dozens of milkweed starter plants to the tribe as part of their restoration initiative. Cape Elizabeth United States
A caterpillar lays on common milkweed inside Rebeka Lowell’s house. This one was collected as a seed from the wild and brought inside to avoid being killed by a tractor that cuts the grass on the wild field. Biddeford United States
Rebekah Lowell tags and releases butterflies in Biddeford, Maine, that will migrate 3,000 miles to Central Mexico. For the last three years Rebekah has religiously searched for and collected monarch eggs and caterpillars from the same field and beyond to increase their chance of survival. In 2021 she released 415 monarchs. In 2022, she released 245 monarchs. With more effort to find and recover the caterpillars and eggs in 2023, Rebekah released only 161 monarch butterflies. Biddeford United States