Legacies of Photographic Silver: Entangled Histories, Geologies and Lives

Silver为模拟摄影的魔力奠定了基础；它是照相底片必不可少的感光元件。白银存在于特定地区，并在全球范围内动员，以实现媒体文化；我们生活在一个关键时期，媒体文化和污染正以不成比例的方式影响着人们和地方。我与美国的银矿矿工、柯达工程师、环保主义者和土著人民一起，探索了白银开采的殖民历史、它的毒性以及它如何改变世界和气候。我将摄影、声音、人种学和其他多种形式的参与结合到一个展览中，旨在集体反思摄影材料如何与人类世纠缠在一起。许多学科使用视觉媒体来帮助我们理解人类世，但这个项目揭示了图像、环境和人之间隐藏的关系。它着眼于构成媒介的材料，以及它们如何以延迟和分散的方式对人类世做出贡献。柯达公园于1890年在美国原住民的土地上建立，一直运作到1975年，是世界上最大的摄影工业综合体，每年将2000吨银加工成模拟胶片。长期以来，人们从事有毒化学物质的开发工作。在加工过程中，有毒光化学物质通过地质、水系统和大气调动（并继续传播）（Li, 2015）。美国的银矿开采在19世纪20年代随着欧洲摄影术的发展而发展。采矿活动破坏了生态和土壤化学。我探索地球物质如何转化为媒体资源；组织和令人不安的景观和未来。构成照片的金属和盐如何在多个尺度上影响社会生态关系？(青,2015)。实地工作位于美国内华达州康斯托克历史悠久的银矿地区，在这里，我使用实验性的音频/视觉方法与采矿基础设施（管道，通道，炼油厂）接触，以检查从地面体验时摄影的外观和声音。我的目标是通过与非人类机构进行视觉接触来研究它们。例如，使用灰尘和土壤制作实验性照片是重新激活景观的一种创造性可能性，形成柯达历史的另一种档案：一种突出材料，景观和人之间联系的档案。我与那些直接（矿工、冶炼厂）和间接（居民）与白银开采有关的人接触，并旨在将土著的声音和摄影白银的经验纳入其中。实地工作也位于柯达公园，纽约。在这里，我与居民和前雇员接触，他们经历了(d)现场的化学污染。我的目标是通过园艺为活动家的工作做出贡献。例如，种植会积累重金属的物种，可以开启关于银的毒性和生态运动的对话（它对人类无毒）。像这样的多模式项目提供了空间，让人们分享与媒体行业相关的护理和解毒经验。像这样的探索性方法有助于改变人类学家与人类和环境的接触方式。与柯达相机俱乐部一起举办在线摄影工作坊，通过我们对摄影的共同热爱，开启了对摄影材料的讨论。像这样的方法使这项研究能够接触到不同的受众，并扩大对媒体行业遗产的理解。为了对这项研究进行反思和参与分享，我的目标是合作展示景观声景和实验照片。这些创造性的方法重塑了人类学、社会科学和环境科学的学科规范。展览将追溯摄影银的相互关联的历史，出现和转变（Acosta et al., 2021）及其与人及其生活的纠缠。

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.