Photography and the ice sheets: a multi-medial investigation into the politics and poetics of photonic interaction.

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My practice-led artistic research investigates the behaviour of photons - their reflection and absorption - in relation to the loss of the sea's reflective power due to the depletion of the ice sheets, through the processes and material manifestations of photography.It asks: What is to be gained by drawing attention to these imperceptible photonic interactions, for both our understanding of contemporary photographic culture and as a contribution to the urgent conceptualisation of climate change?We most frequently encounter photographs on a screen connected to the internet without considering the history embedded in every image that the retina fleetingly receives. When we view an image of a sun-lit subject on our mobile telephone, the electric light that forms that image is only nanoseconds old, but the depicted sunlight appears to us as the result of a process beginning some 40,000 years before. Starting with the formation of photons in the sun's core this process ends with them streaming from the surface of the sun travelling eight minutes to reach earth. Some photons find their way to reflect off an object, some of these then find their way into the lens of a camera.I view this process of reflection, from object into camera to collide with a receptive surface (light-sensitive film or silicon-based sensor) - 'the photographic event', as described by philosopher Henri Van Lier (2018) - as analogous to the process of photon reflection and absorption that contributes to our ecological crisis every day. The surface of ice-sheets function as giant mirrors reflecting photons back to space. As these mirrors crack and break apart, more photons are absorbed by the Earth's land and ocean surfaces, which heat up. NASA has stated: 'The ability of greenhouse gases to absorb and emit photons is what global warming is all about.' (Earth Observatory 2007) What is to be gained from exploring the connections between these two light-based processes? How can the loss of the sea's reflective power relate to an individual's experience of receiving and processing a photographic image? Drawing on these analogies, I aim to engage with the meta-narrative of anthropogenic climate change through the creation of a series of multi-media art installations, utilising diverse reflective materials, optical devices and natural light.The creative-practical element of my research will be underpinned by philosophical-contextual analysis, especially New Materialist philosophy (Barad 2008, Bennett 2010) in relation to photographic processes. In connecting the latter to the terrestrial reflection of photons off-ice, I will expand the role conventional photography can play in the conceptualisation of climate change. A photograph capturing an insubstantial glint of light off a reflective surface is a material process inextricably entangled with the world on a quantum and philosophical level - as set out by philosopher and physicist Karen Barad in her theory of 'agential realism'.Methodologically, my artistic practice aims to demonstrate a 'performative alternative to representationalism' (Barad, 2008), specifically the assumption of the conventional photographic image's relationship to 'truth'. My research is thus situated in context of the 'expanded field of photography' that provides alternative ways of thinking about the medium through investigations of its materials and processes.Photographic practices and theories have historically been located at the intersecting fields of art, science and technology. My research will not polarise art and science but seek a synthesis through the hybrid approach of the practice-led inquiry and consider how an artist is positioned to respond to specific scientific knowledge in unexpected, surprising ways.