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Camera Geologica: Photography and Resource Extraction
02 May 2024, 5:00 pm–6:30 pm
Media and Capitalocene Series
This event is free.
Event Information
Open to
- All
Availability
- Yes
Cost
- Free
Organiser
-
Kirsty Sinclair Dootson – SELCS
Location
-
North-West Wing Lecture Theatre G22Wilkins Main BuildingGower StreetLondonWC1E 6BTUnited Kingdom
Camera Geologica: Photography and Resource Extraction
Challenging the emphasis on immateriality in discourses on photography, this talk focuses on the inextricable links between image-making and resource extraction, revealing how mining is a precondition of photography. Photography begins underground and, in photographs of mines and mining, frequently returns there. Through a materials-driven analysis of visual culture, I illustrate histories of colonization, labour, and environmental degradation to explore the ways in which photography is enmeshed within and enables global extractive capitalism. Reading materiality alongside representation and visual form reveals a complex picture of photography’s implication within extractive capitalism and, in turn, its potential to resist it.
About the Speaker
Siobhan Angus
Assistant Professor at Carleton University
Siobhan Angus is an assistant professor of Media Studies at Carleton University where she teaches the history of photography and the environmental humanities. Her book, Camera Geologica, was published by Duke University Press in March 2024.