Ecocritical Lens: Photography, Environment, and the Anthropocene

Dear Colleagues,

I invite contributions to this Special Issue of Arts on the topic of ecocritical photography and its relationship to the Anthropocene. While the Anthropocene Working Group has recently rejected the scientific justification of the Anthropocene as a new geological age, scholars, artists, and the public continue to adopt and adapt this concept as a useful framework for understanding our current environmental moment. Not without its detractors—who have argued for a variety of different terms and conceptual parameters—the idea of the Anthropocene has become a touchstone in the arts. Photography is no exception.

The tradition of landscape photography remains central to the medium, and, in recent years, it has been strongly shaped by human-driven changes that have altered the environment, including settler-colonialism, resource extraction practices, forest management techniques, pollution of land and water, climate change, and mass species extinction. These have led to a variety of interdisciplinary and theoretical approaches that aim to understand the anthropogenic environment, such as eco-aesthetics and the sublime, eco-justice and racism, eco-Marxism and new materialism, and reappraisals of human–animal relations. These critical concerns have lead to an increasingly poignant body of photographic works that explore how to reproduce and represent the Anthropocene in all its complexity.

This Special Issue will consider the state of ecocritical discourse in photographic studies, as well as its larger adoption as a method of inquiry and analysis. I invite papers that explore examples of historic and/or contemporary ecocritical analyses of photography through case studies or theoretical framings using an ecocritical lens. The growth in interest in ecocritical photography and methods of analysis has been demonstrated in the recent literature, which has grounded photography in its material, spatial, and temporal histories, and this Special Issue will contribute to this growing body of work.

We request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of around 200 words summarising their intended contribution. Please send it to the Guest Editor (karla.mcmanus@uregina.ca) or to the Arts editorial office (arts@mdpi.com). Abstracts will be reviewed by the Guest Editor for the purposes of ensuring proper fit within the scope of this Special Issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer-review.

References:

1. Angus, Siobhan. Camera Geologica: An Elemental History of Photography. Duke University Press, 2024.
2. Arends, Bergit. Photography, Ecology and Historical Change in the Anthropocene: Activating the Archives. Routledge, 2024.
3. Baillargeon, Claude. Imaging a Shattering Earth: Contemporary Photography and the Environmental Debate. Meadow Brook Art Gallery, 2005.
4. Braddock, Alan C., and Dr. Christoph Irmscher, eds. A Keener Perception: Ecocritical Studies in American Art History. 1st ed. University Alabama Press, 2009.
5. Davis, Heather, and Etienne Turpin, eds. Art in the Anthropocene: Encounters Among Aesthetics, Politics, Environments and Epistemologies. Critical Climate Change. Open Humanities Press, 2015. http://openhumanitiespress.org/Davis-Turpin_2015_Art-in-the-Anthropocene.pdf.
6. Demos, T. J. The Migrant Image: The Art and Politics of Documentary During Global Crisis. Duke University Press, 2013.
7. Dunaway, Finis. Seeing Green: The Use and Abuse of American Environmental Images. University Of Chicago Press, 2015.
8. Heise, Ursula K. Imagining Extinction: The Cultural Meanings of Endangered Species. The University of Chicago Press, 2017.
9. Hore, Jarrod. Visions of Nature: How Landscape Photography Shaped Settler Colonialism. University of California Press, 2022.
10. Kusserow, Karl, Alan C. Braddock, Maura Coughlin, et al. Picture Ecology: Art and Ecocriticism in Planetary Perspective. University Art Museum, 2021.
11. McManus, Karla. “How Anthropo-Scenic! Concerns and Debates about the Age of the Anthropocene.” In Anthropocene: Burtynsky, Baichwal, de Pencier, 1st ed., edited by Andrea Kunard, Sophie Hackett, and Urs Stahel. Goose Lane Editions; Art Gallery of Ontario, 2018.
12. O’Brian, John, ed. Camera Atomica. Art Gallery of Ontario; Black Dog Publishing, 2015.
13. Parak, Gisela, ed. Eco-Images: Historical Views and Political Strategies. Rachel Carson Centre Perspectives. Rachel Carson Centre for Environment and Society; Deutsche Museum, 2013.
14. Patrizio, Andrew. The Ecological Eye: Assembling an Ecocritical Art History. Manchester University Press, 2018.
15. Scott, Conohar. Photography and Environmental Activism: Visualising the Struggle Against Industrial Pollution. 1st edition. Routledge, 2022.

Dr. Karla McManus
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Arts is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• eco-photography
• art and the Anthropocene
• ecocritical art history
• material histories of photography
• photography studies