Photographic Ecologies

Schaefer, William

doi:10.1162/octo_a_00303

Photographic Ecologies

Schaefer, William

Authors

Dr William Schaefer william.schaefer@durham.ac.uk
Associate Professor

Abstract

In his body of photographs, Samalada (2008), the Chinese artist Adou uses extremely expired film; the resulting artifacts—marks of the animal, vegetable, and mineral matter composing film surfaces—are as visible a part of the photographs as their depictions of relations among humans, animals, plants, cultural artifacts, earth and sky in southwestern China. Adou and other photographers in China, Japan, and the West working in a time of environmental crisis understand film itself in ecological terms. The very materiality and forms of photographic images are emergent from and interact with larger ecosystems of matter, bodies, spaces, surfaces, markings, liquids, pollution, light, and the atmosphere, thereby allowing the human to be seen as one among many contingent agents within ecological processes. Photography thus becomes a crucial site for staging and rethinking fundamental questions of the relations between culture and nature—and for learning to picture the Anthropocene.

Citation

Schaefer, W. (2017). Photographic Ecologies. October, 161, 42-68. https://doi.org/10.1162/octo_a_00303

Journal Article Type	Article
Acceptance Date	Jul 17, 2016
Online Publication Date	Sep 14, 2017
Publication Date	Sep 14, 2017
Deposit Date	Oct 13, 2017
Publicly Available Date	Sep 14, 2018
Journal	October
Print ISSN	0162-2870
Electronic ISSN	1536-013X
Publisher	Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	161
Pages	42-68
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1162/octo_a_00303