Siobhan Angus. Camera Geologica: An Elemental History of Photography. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, March 2024.

In Camera Geologica: An Elemental History of Photography, I tell a history of photography through the minerals upon which the medium depends. Standard narratives of photography emphasize light, which has a number of associations that shape cultural understandings of photography. Light is only part of the story: the chemical interaction of light with light-sensitive minerals makes the photograph possible. Camera Geologica shifts the focus from light to minerals, considering the social and environmental implications of using mined materials in photos.

Camera Geologica shifts the focus from light to minerals, considering the social and environmental implications of using mined materials in photos.

At the root of this book is a simple premise: photography begins underground and, in photographs of mines and mining, frequently returns there. Since its inception, analog and digital photography has relied on both small and large-scale extraction. In the twentieth century, over twenty percent of silver produced worldwide was used in photography. Today, eighty-four percent of the stable elements on the periodic table are used in image-making technologies, revealing digital photography’s entangled economies of extraction. Vast amounts of earthly materials have to be dredged up to make photographs seem weightless.

From this core premise, the book moves between geographies and time periods to trace the use of six mined materials used in photographic processes: bitumen, silver, platinum, iron, uranium, and rare earth elements. Materials are the organising structure of the book, but the focus is on how these materials have been integrated into the workings of industrial, extractive capitalism, and in turn, what photographs can tell us about how our world is made.

Through a materials-driven analysis, I illustrate histories of colonization, labor, and environmental degradation, revealing photography’s complicity in the economic, geopolitical, and social systems that order the world.

Through a materials-driven analysis, I illustrate histories of colonization, labor, and environmental degradation, revealing photography’s complicity in the economic, geopolitical, and social systems that order the world. Camera Geologica ultimately reveals a complex picture of photography’s implication within extraction—and its potential as a critical tool of anti-extractive worldmaking.

Feature Image: B.C. Silver Mine, Skeena Dist., B.C. June 1928. Buisson, A. Credit: Canada. Dept. of Mines and Technical Surveys / Library and Archives Canada / PA-014042.

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Siobhan Angus

Siobhan Angus works at the intersections of art history, media studies, and the environmental humanities. Her current research explores the visual culture of resource extraction with a focus on materiality, labor, and environmental justice. She is an assistant professor of Media Studies at Carleton University and holds a Ph.D. in Art History and Visual Culture from York University where her dissertation was awarded the Governor General’s Gold Medal. Prior to joining Carleton, Angus was the Banting Postdoctoral Fellow at Yale University. She is the author of Camera Geologica: An Elemental History of Photography, (Duke University Press 2024) and her research has been published in Environmental Humanities, Capitalism and the Camera (Verso, 2021) and October. At the heart of her research program lies an intellectual and political commitment to environmental, economic, and social justice.

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• New Book – Camera Geologica: An Elemental History of Photography - April 23, 2024