Surveying the Anthropocene presents a range of approaches to image-making concerning the environment by some of the best artist-photographers working worldwide, alongside texts by some of the most illuminating writers on environmental questions, at a pivotal moment in the human relationship with the planet.
Photographic approaches to environmental imagery have altered fundamentally in recent decades, largely as a result of increasing socio-ecological awareness. This insightful international survey, with a strong representation from Scotland, considers the varied range of current working practices of a representative selection of artist-photographers, both renowned and emerging, whose image-making explores human-caused environmental change. It concentrates particularly on work which relates to the types of impact, on climate and the web of life, that are sufficiently significant and globally widespread to appear in the future record of the rocks as a new geological epoch – the Anthropocene.
The concept of the Anthropocene has engaged the attention and imagination of a wide range of commentators from very different backgrounds and walks of life. It therefore provides an excellent context in which to discuss, in an open and cross-disciplinary way, the range of responses of artist-photographers and cultural writers to our present global situation of multiple, interconnected environmental and social crises – and the options for human ingenuity in addressing these.
Contributing photographers
Jack Aeby, Antoine d’Agata, Benoit Aquin, Mandy Barker, Olaf Otto Becker, Daniel Beltrá, Tobia Bezzola, Alex Boyd, Marilyn Bridges, Alicia Bruce, David Buckland, Edward Burtynsky, Anne Campbell, Thomas Joshua Cooper, Cortis & Sonderegger, Dalziel + Scullion, Pedro David de Oliveira Castello Branco, Bryan Debus, Susan Derges, Terry Evans, Tim Flach, Hamish Fulton, Sophie Gerrard, Lorne Gill, Emmet Gowin, Alexander Hamilton, J.J. Harrison, Louis Helbig, Zig Jackson/Rising Buffalo, Chris Jordan, Aleksandr Kupny, Chrystel Lebas, Ayelen Liberona, Timo Lieber, Owen Logan, Patricia & Angus Macdonald, Pradip Malde, Katie Blair Matthews, Meryl McMaster, Gideon Mendel, Richard Misrach, Fabrice Monteiro, Simon Norfolk, Susanne Ramsenthaler, Paul Souders, Jamey Stillings, Thomas Struth, Timm Suess, Klaus Thymann, Chris Wainwright, Greg White, Pinar Yoldas
Scientists and photographers, some unnamed, from: Federal government of the United States; United States Department of Energy;, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, USA: Hannah A. Bullock; Azaibi Tamin;, NASA: including Jeff Schmalz (MODIS)
Contributing writers
Dan Bailey, Barbara Bloemink, Kate Brown, Jared Diamond, William A. Ewing, Jared Farmer, Willis E. Hartshorn, Leslie Hook, Siobhan Lyons, Robert Macfarlane, Bill McKibben, George Monbiot, Pete Moore, Jason Arunn Murugesu, Natasha Myers, Adam Nicolson, Andrew Simms.