1st Edition
Photography, Ecology and Historical Change in the Anthropocene Activating Archives
Moving beyond existing scholarship, this book connects photography, archives, ecology and historical change and critically applies the Anthropocene as framework to the in-depth study of artists’ projects. It discards single modes of seeing environmental transformations in favour of a multiple and de-centred environmental imagination.
Bergit Arends uses multidisciplinary perspectives to view localized environmental, social and political issues through research-based artistic practices. The book not only makes available original research into newly and recently discovered archives of ecological and historical change but also shows how this research is manifest in exhibition formats. This book presents international, transhistorical projects by contemporary visual artists who use archives together with photography as documentary and performative media for the comparative study of environments and places. A wide array of artists from diverse backgrounds working primarily in Europe and North America from the 1970s to the present day are discussed and set in relation to Anthropocene narratives. Case studies include environmental archive-based work by Nguyen the Thuc, Christiane Eisler, Chrystel Lebas, Mark Dion, Joy Gregory and Philip Miller.
The book will be of interest to scholars working in photography, archive studies, art history, visual culture, environmental humanities and ecocriticism.
Introduction 1. Photography, Ecology and Archives in the Anthropocene: De-centring Environmental Imagination 2. Archival Metabolisms: Landscape Transformations in Nguyen the Thuc Kohle unter Magdeborn [Coal underneath Magdeborn] (1978) and Christiane Eisler (2014) 3. Re-activating the Sir Edward James Salisbury Photographic Archive of Ecological Images (ca. 1905–1938): Chrystel Lebas Field Studies (2011–) 4. A Yard of Jungle (1992/1915) and ‘My Jungle Table’ (1923) Re-performed: Naturalist William Beebe and Artist Mark Dion 5. Beyond the Plantation Archive: Performing Lives Through Photography in Joy Gregory and Philip Miller Seeds of Empire (2021) and Hans Sloane A Voyage . . . to Jamaica (1687/1688) Coda
Biography
Bergit Arends is British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellow at The Courtauld Institute of Art.
“Arends ticks all the boxes in this fresh, innovative, and multi-disciplinary approach to photography and the Anthropocene. Timely, relevant, and insightful, Photography, Ecology and Historical Change in the Anthropocene employs a broadened perspective on archives to demonstrate the power of contemporary artists to address the pressing environmental issues of our times.”
-- Joan M. Schwartz, Queen’s University, Canada
