Another West: Ecologies of Photography

Iconic photography of the American West often showcases dramatic vistas of mountains and canyons, rivers, and vast desert landscapes. But there is “another West” to be found both in photographic practice as well as in contemporary scholarship on the topic. In an era of climate change and ever-louder calls for climate justice—and in a place like California, where drought, wildfires, water shortages, and pollution are undeniable signs of global warming—an opportunity, or perhaps even a fundamental responsibility, exists to reexamine photography and the role it has played in documentation as well as in environmental degradation.

The 19th-century Western survey photographs by the likes of Alexander Gardner, Timothy O’Sullivan, and Carleton E. Watkins have long been subjects of study. Over the past few decades, historians of photography have drawn close attention to the social, economic, and political underpinnings of image production in the American West. Through this lens, Watkins’ Rounding Cape Horn shows not just the objective reality of the railroad—or “the hard fact,” as contemporary observers termed it—but also gestures at how the camera assisted landscape destruction under the banner of progress, cutting through Indigenous lands, detonating rocks, and elevating tracks on which coal-powered trains would carry raw materials extracted from the Western earth. Mining practices were frequently understood as racialized at this time, including through visual culture.

Photographs of Western expansion through demolition and construction multiplied, relying on the labor of many unnamed image producers. Those who were best known were white and male, and they became synonymous with Western American photography into the 20th century. Such figures include Ansel Adams and Edward Weston, both well represented in The Huntington’s collections.

The scholarly conference that we are convening March 1–2 at The Huntington, “Ecologies of Photography: Materials, Industries, and Environment in the American West,” will feature speakers not only taking on canonical figures but also exploring lesser-known photographers in The Huntington’s holdings whose work has not entered the artistic canon. These photographers include geoscientist John S. Shelton, who made hundreds of aerial photographs of the American West between 1940 and 1980; amateur photographer T. P. Lukens, who used the medium to advocate for developing ecological practices; and the anonymous photographer (or photographers) whose 282 unattributed photographs, organized by ship commander Michael A. Healy, documented trade and hunting along the Alaska Coast.

By examining photographs other than those of classic Western landscapes, we reconsider how Indigenous persons and settlers, both in California and beyond, perceived and interacted with the environment. After all, photographs of the noncontinental United States, including Alaska and Hawaiʻi, are also key dimensions of “another West,” even though they tend not to be considered as such. But the same colonialist and extractive impulses that drove Manifest Destiny—the belief that white settlers were divinely ordained to push westward across the continent—extended well beyond California.

The “Ecologies of Photography” conference explores not only an expanded Western geography but also burrows under the surface of both Earth and the photographic image. Contrary to the popular image of lone forty-niners panning for gold in California’s streambeds, much of the West’s valuable resources were buried underground, requiring environmentally harmful hard-rock or hydraulic mining.

An exciting strand of contemporary scholarship is looking not only at photographs as images but also at photographs as material objects composed of light, water, minerals, and paper (derived from trees, leading to deforestation), in addition to being composed of albumen, gelatin, or both. Gelatin, which has historically been derived from cow bones, is the emulsive substrate of gelatin silver prints—the most popular photographic prints of the 20th century.

Finally, through conversations with artists Cara Romero (Chemehuevi Indian Tribe) and Binh Danh, we will learn from those who work out in the field today. Romero explores the ecosystems of Indigenous life, both past and present, and envisions her work as “inseparable from the land,” while Danh reclaims the mirror-like surface of 19th-century daguerreotypes to reflect on his place as a refugee in the American outdoors.

This exploration of photography’s ecological dimensions forces us to consider the extractive practices animating both “another West” and the history of photography writ large.

Read more about the conference and register to attend.

Funding for this conference has been provided by the E. L. and Ruth B. Shannon Research Endowment for Western Programs at The Huntington.

Monica Bravo is an assistant professor of art and archaeology at Princeton University.

Carolin Görgen is an associate professor of American studies at Sorbonne Université, Paris.