Legacies of Photographic Silver: Entangled Histories, Geologies and Lives

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Silver grounds the magic of analogue photography; it is the essential light-sensitive element of photographic negatives. Silver exists in specific territories and is mobilised across the globe to enable media culture; and we live in a critical time where media culture and pollution are affecting people and places in disproportionate ways. Working with U.S silver miners, KODAK engineers, conservationists, and Indigenous peoples, I explore colonial histories of silver extraction, its toxicity, and how it changes worlds and climates. I combine photography, sound, ethnography, and other kinds of multi-modal engagements into an exhibition aimed at collective reflection into how photographic materiality entangles with the Anthropocene. Many disciplines use visual media to help us understand the Anthropocene, but this project uncovers hidden relations between images, environments and people. It looks at the materials that constitute media, and how these contribute to the Anthropocene in delayed and dispersed ways.Established in 1890 on Native American lands and active until 1975, KODAK Park was the world's largest photographic industrial complex, processing 2000 tonnes of silver a year into analogue film. It had a long, exploitative history of people working with toxic chemistries. During processing, toxic photo-chemistries mobilised (and continue to travel), through geologies, water systems and atmospheres (Li, 2015). U.S silver mining grew in the 1820s, alongside European developments in photography. Ecologies and soil chemistries are disrupted by mining practices. I explore how earth matter transformed into resources for media; organising and unsettling landscapes and futures. How do metals and salts that comprise photographs affect socio-ecological relations at multiple scales? (Tsing, 2015).Field work is located in the historical silver mining region of The Comstock, Nevada U.S.A. Here I use experimental audio/visual methods to engage with mining infrastructures (pipelines, access roads, refineries) to examine what photography looks and sounds like when experienced from the ground. I aim to research nonhuman agencies by engaging with them visually. For example, making experimental photographs using dusts and soils is one creative possibility to reactivate landscapes, forming an alternative archive of KODAK's history: one that foregrounds links between materials, landscapes, and people. I engage with those directly (miners, smelters) and indirectly associated (residents) with silver extraction, and aim to incorporate Indigenous voices and experiences of photographic silver.Field work also locates at KODAK Park, New York. Here I engage with residents and ex-employees who experience(d) chemical pollution from the site. I aim to contribute to campaigners' work through gardening. For example, planting species that accumulate heavy metals opens conversations into silver's toxicity and movement through ecologies (it is not toxic to humans). Multimodal projects like this provide spaces to share experiences of care and de-toxification in relation to media industries. Exploratory methods like these work towards changing how anthropologists engage with people and environments.Running online photography workshops with KODAK Camera Club opens up discussions into photographic materials, through our shared love of making photographs. Methods like these allow this research to reach disparate audiences and broaden understanding into the legacies of media industries. For a reflexive and engaged sharing of this research, I aim to work collaboratively to exhibit landscape soundscapes and experimental photographs. These are creative methods that reframe disciplinary canons in anthropology and social and environmental sciences. The exhibition will trace interlinking histories, emergences and transformations of photographic silver (Acosta et al., 2021) and its entanglements with people and their lives.