Abstract

Images of disaster - ranging anywhere from war photography to photographs of floods or wildfires - are inherently caught up in debates on whether or not visually appealing images can productively represent devastation without their visual splendour eclipsing the severity of the recorded disaster.

Departing from T.J. Demos’ ascription of importance to the visualisation of the everyday presence of radically harmful organisations and practices, I believe that photographic production can indeed be fruitful in the critical aesthetic representation of ecological devastation. We must extend our efforts to create photographs that also visualise the subtle and banal aspects of our ecological crisis in order to eradicate the perception that extreme events are exceptional rarities, and are instead symptomatic of larger systemic political, economic, and social issues.

The relative absence of this type of imagery contributes to the frequent passivity that we observe in viewers as they experience a certain conceptual or physical distance from the image and its content, stagnating potential further critical engagement and eliminating reflections on responsibility and accountability.

This artistic research project investigates how images representing ecological devastation may be able to invite active participation and further critical reflection from their viewer through the proactive dissection and challenging of this perceived distance.

In doing so, it will combine theoretical thinking on affect and the notion of the uncanny with photographic practice to engage with the phenomenon of light pollution. As the widespread effects of this specific form of ecological pollution - that can be exclusively traced back to human actions - largely go unnoticed by general publics, this project centres a critical and theoretically informed practice of ‘making-visible’ to subvert the sense of distance and instead establish an inherent and direct connection between the viewer and the image.