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Publications



Photography and Environmental Activism


Historically, photography has acted as a technology for documenting the industrial transformation of the world around us; usually to benefit the interests of capitalist markets. An alternative photographic tradition exists, however, in which the indexical image is used "evidentially" to protest against incidents of industrial pollution. By providing a definition of environmental activism in photographic praxis, and identifying influential practitioners, this publication demonstrates that photography plays a vital role in the struggle against environmental despoliation.

This book will be of interest to scholars in photography, art and visual culture, environmental humanities, and the history of photography. Featuring photographs contributed from Guilio di Sturco (who also provides the cover image), Sean Gallagher, Rasel Chowdhury, Traces of Nitrate, Sophie Gerrard, Pieter Hugo, Chris Jordan, Mandy barker, Andy Hughes, Ana Maria Guerra, Peter Kennard, Sant Kalsa, Edward Burtynsky, Jamey Stillings, Mark Neville, David T Hanson, Kate Orff, Toby Smith, and many others.

Reviews

Noemi Quagliati (2023) Photography and Environmental Activism: Visualising the Struggle Against Industrial Pollution, Visual Resources, 37:3.
DOI: 10.1080/01973762.2023.2279809

Siobhan Angus (2023) Photography and Environmental Activism: Visualising the Struggle Against Industrial Pollution, Photography and Culture, 16:1, 89-92.
DOI: 10.1080/17514517.2023.2228082

Erik Palmer (2023) Photography and Environmental Activism: Visualising the Struggle Against Industrial Pollution by Conohar Scott, Visual Communication Quarterly, 30:1, 57-58.
DOI: 10.1080/15551393.2023.2165389



Book reviews 

Book Review: Katerina Angelopoulou, The Fumes of Mars
Source Magazine, #120 (February, 2026)

Book Review: De Adem Van De Berg, The Mountain’s Breath
Source Magazine, #119 (November, 2025)

Book Review: Martin Tscholl, Imaginary Ecologies
Source Magazine, #115 (July, 2024)

Book Review: Tanja Engelbert, Forgotten Seas
Source Magazine, #112 (October, 2023)



Articles and essays

Feature: The Many Deaths of Empedocles

Source Magazine, #116. (Autumn, 2024)

The elements – Earth, Air, Water, and Fire – as described by Empedocles 2,500 years ago, are still relevant categories for thinking about our ecosystem and more particularly the way we are damaging it. As Conohar Scott writes, talking specifically about Fire, our assumption that we could harness combustion for our own ends without any consequences now looks hubristic, in a way that Empedocles would have recognised. Scott surveys the approaches photographers have taken to record uncontrollable fire’s devestating consequences.

La Vetta e L’Abisso: Carrara (August, 2023)

Photographies, 16 (3). pp. 414-431. ISSN 1754-0763.

La Vetta e L’Abisso is a sequence of photographs which address the problems associated with over-mining in the famous white marble mines of Carrara, Tuscany. As a visual essay, the series attempts to undercut contemporary notions of the sublime in the documentation of mineral extractivism, which has been dominant in recent years due to the popularity of photographers such as Edward Burtynsky. Furthermore, the title of the essay, and the display of the monochrome large format photographs with the addition of a gold-selenium tone, alludes to eco-Marxist notions of commodity fetishism and social alienation, which underpin the exploitative logic of capitalist (re-)production. Drawing on the authors previously published critical commentaries on the qualities of photography and environmental activism, this essay proposes an approach to praxis which undercuts the distant passivity of the sublime in favour of encountering the negative effects of extractivism first-hand.

Gideon Mendel Fire/Flood (February, 2023)

1000 Words Magazine.

Conohar Scott posits that Gideon Mendel’s outdoor exhibition at the Soho Photography Quarter provides a much-needed counterpoint to the iridescent spectacle of the solitary iceberg, which, upon further observation, is divorced from the broader socio-ecological context of climate change.

The eco-anarchist potential of environmental photography: Richard Misrach’s & Kate Orff’s Petrochemical America (2020)

The Routledge Companion to Photography Theory. Routledge, UK. ISBN 9781138845770.

Taking Richard Misrach’s & Kate Orff’s publication Petrochemical America (2012) as a starting point for a range of debates, this paper argues that environmental photography has a crucial role to play in bringing about an awareness of environmental ethics, which can aid activists and autonomous groups such as citizen scientists in their struggle against industrial pollution. Key to this debate is the definition of the term environmental photography as a multimodal and collaborative genre of cultural production, which promotes the political values of eco-anarchist theories such as social ecology, through the medium of aesthetics.

Photographing mining pollution in gold rush California (April, 2017).

Photographies, 10 (2). pp. 189-209. ISSN 1754-0763.

This paper draws comparison between three photographers who documented the North Bloomfield Mining Co.’s (1866-1899) hydraulic gold mine, in California. The history of the North Bloomfield Mining Co. is of interest because of the role that photography played in promoting the interests of corporate capitalism, and conversely acting as an evidential tool for farmers whose lands were flooded by polluted tailings emanating from the mine. The company twice commissioned Carleton Watkins to document their undertakings; however, this paper argues that the aesthetic of the ‘industrial sublime’ originating in Watkins’ photographs obfuscates an understanding of the ecological realities of mining. Alternatively, this paper presents two lesser-known photographers, J.A. Todd and ‘Clinch’, who adopt a counter-aesthetic approach to Watkins. Todd’s photographs from the Woodruff vs. North Bloomfield [1884] trial were presented as evidence in the first collective civil action in US legal history, which pitched the interests of farmers against the corporate mining industry.
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