Photography and the American West have long been culturally intertwined. Since the 19th century, iconic photographs of western landscapes—think of Carleton Watkins’s Yosemite views—have been read as inherently environmentalist. Challenging this assumption, Ecologies of Photography in the American West examines the medium’s role in documenting, profiting from, and transforming ecosystems across its varied geographies. This book brings together a diverse range of scholars and artists to trace photography’s roots in the earth and its entanglement with resource extraction and ecological rights. Timely and expansive in scope, the volume reframes the history of the region and foregrounds photography’s complicity—as well as its potential—in shaping environmental understanding. It speaks to anyone attuned to the urgent environmental conversations defining the contemporary American West.

With an afterword by Robin Kelsey.

Monica Bravo is Assistant Professor of the History and Theory of Photography in the Department of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University.
Carolin Görgen is Associate Professor of American Studies at Sorbonne Université and a junior member of the Institut Universitaire de France.

Going far beyond conventional discussions of photographs of the American West, this volume includes Indigenous perspectives and addresses colonial relations, discusses photochemistry and the legacies of extraction, and makes vividly evident the many connections between images and the material, environmental, and social relations that lie behind them. — Michelle Henning, University of Liverpool