fotoğraf: Hans van Reenen (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Photography and Climate. Despite both fields’ deeply entrenched common history, shedding light on the communication that exists between photography and climate appears both an exceedingly difficult and remarkably easy task to undertake. Easy, because we possess a tremendous abundance of material available for interpretation, far more in fact than we could ever wish for. Difficult though, because we lack a precise understanding of which purpose these photographs serve; they simply exist. Yet, as soon as we consider that space – however we may call it, whether it be the environment, nature, or earth… – is the single phenomenon photography relates to, we shall soon acknowledge that photographers simply cannot fail to capture climates.For the cautious minds, even within the most manipulative visual production there could be, a message regarding the demise (or, more accurately phrased, the murder) of nature is to be found. Perhaps our search should turn its focus on how the said expiry has been transformed into an aesthetic material. This in turn will invite us to identify the causes and consequences of the seemingly eye-catching landscapes which the harsh and abnormal states of the world have somehow turned into. In this respect, the present text contends that disasters, when solely conceived of as symbolic signs, could not even begin to inspire the least form of awareness of nature. Nonetheless, it still seeks for the possibilities a nurturing such a consciousness, no matter how desperately. Do photographs possess the ability to reveal how those things that fall from the sky are not but cute and enchanting water droplets? And in fact, why should we expect such a duty to be undertaken by a communication medium, while scientific procedures lie in plain sight before us?
There is a risk that the problems caused by the disconnect between photography and climate might lead us to indulge in blabber, hampering our ability to address the issue by following a sound method. Attempting to solve an equation which involves information technologies, artistic creations, political-economic organisations and nature constitutes an overwhelmingly challenging task. Still, there are a few key configurations which our eyes may discern amidst this chaos. For one thing, we cannot fail to notice how the cloudbursts of images generated by information technologies have expunged photography’s impactfulness. Photography once formed the official language of human-induced environmental disasters, in other words climate change. From the 1990s to the 2010s, this aspect of photography remained particularly potent, and played an instrumental role in the acknowledgement of climate change as a paramount issue for humanity. Such pictures as that of a vulture hovering above a famished African child, polar bears adrift on melting pieces of ice floe, or desiccated and cracked patches of earth, have been lastingly driven into our minds as the ultimate visual expression of climate change. This intricately woven – chiefly by Greenpeace in the 1990s – visual-environmental communication succeeded in convincing us that were on the brink of global disaster. (1) Today, on the other hand, we are beginning to understand that visual communication, rather than serving to advance environmental awareness, primarily fulfils the audience’s desire for spectacle. The knowledge that “the Earth is dying” which can only exist in its raw form through the communication established between the retina and space, is ensnared by the filter that rules out less-than-riveting images: technology. This we understood as we witnessed the euphoric reactions subjects gave to disaster videos disseminated through digital platforms. Regrettably, glacial masses melting and crashing into vast waters holds constituted nothing more than spectacle for such observers. The way the dominant discourse equates anxiety to a mood disorder which does not rightfully belong to human consciousness is accountable for that state of things to a large extent.
The relationship between photography and climate change, or, more simply termed, the photographs which climate change constitutes the main subject of, may appear to be nothing more than the aestheticisation of nature. We must acknowledge that once its democratic aspect, available as it is for widespread use, has been filtered out of the equation, photography possesses a methodological value which allows it to grant visibility to the invisible. Just as the James Webb telescope, itself essentially a colossal camera, translates cosmic phenomena into images comprehensible to the human eye. Visual documentation plays a pivotal role in the formation of climate change-related estimations. For instance, “before and after” photographs depicting devastation, such as NASA's 2002 satellite images of the Larsen B ice shelf breaking off from the Antarctic mainland and melting away, possess pivotal significance as scientific data documenting the climate crisis. (2)However, images as scientific data lack the capacity to convey the socioeconomic and cultural context of natural disasters, and instead merely articulate the inevitability of nature’s agony. Poising nature as something “external” only adds further grist to the mill of the idea that “there is nothing we can do here”.
From this standpoint, it appears that the relationship which binds photography with nature possesses two main facets. The first is its “aesthetic aspect”, of an artistic and documentary nature, as appears in works (such as photobooks, exhibitions, and posters created by professionals) articulating pure depictions of nature, imbued with either the latter’s exploitation by the industrial order, or egocentric narratives. As for the second, it consists in its “epistemic aspect”, offering non-negligible advantages for the conduction of observation, data collection, and estimation (e.g. satellite imagery, spectrographic images, and even ordinary digital photographs produced by experts) in the framework of the scientific analysis of climate change (3). However, these two notions should not be conceived of as distinct styles, irrevocably diverging at a crossroads. Rather, both concepts enable but the discovery and categorisation of yet another paradoxical aspect of photography. Both exist as visual manners of representing climate change. Yet, there exists a “third” direction which, despite physically and materially unfolding before our eyes, remains undefined, and stands out as a phenomenon that has successfully eluded this cluster of mass visual productions. We shall designate this third facet as photography’s “anthropo-photogenic aspect”; that is, a participatory practise which records human-induced environmental destruction as though it were “natural death”, whereby individuals of all ages ceaselessly ascribe aesthetic values to this very destruction through everyday photographs.
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The aesthetics of disaster. The diagnoses according to which nature and landscape photography have paved the way for the emergence of modern environmental movements are far from groundless. (4) From the 1960s onwards, the landscape photography movement that circumvented all human elements, within American photography, which itself may be regarded as the incubator of modern photography, shifted directions and evolved from images of pristine nature, evocative of Ivan Shishkin’s creations, into pictures of anthropocenic scenery. From this juncture onwards, the subject of images ceased to be untouched, virgin nature, and instead became the relationship between the latter and industrial society. However, in the meantime, the tremendous development and democratisation of information technologies undermined photography’s capacity to both focus and point out. Following the inception of cyberspace, and the advent of the Web 3.0 architectural revolution, the professional visual storyteller was replaced by photograph-taking masses. Unlike all those which took place in earlier epochs, this development, which truly constituted a moment of upheaval in the history of communication, led us to become overrun by representations of nature and the environment. As it happens, the latter are also representations of our irremediable disconnection from nature, and our transition from natural climates to artificial microclimates (e.g. metropolises, cyberspace, techno-culture). The discourse on natural life, which was once devised by professionals according to a specific framework, is now being rewritten by digital masses currently in the process of adapting to artificial microclimates. Despite being physically immersed in nature, and due to the dominance acquired by visual communication in the industrial society, we have rapidly become beset by the egocentric narratives brought about by these newly-emerging microclimates. Humanity and its culture have no less speedily distanced themselves away from nature. It should come as no surprise that the photographs which derived from this culture gave permanence to the feeling that disaster lies “somewhere out there”; for while visual arts, democratised and multiplied through the agency of technology, migrated from privileged and inaccessible abodes to the homes of ordinary citizens, it neglected to carry with it its most essential component: the knowledge of life, of what occurs, and of disaster.
There will unfortunately never be a miraculous image such as will directly instil the human-induced essence of climate change into consciousnesses. In fact, the photographer in person is the one who performs the very move that unequivocally eliminates this possibility: by turning the abnormal states of nature into something enticing, they conceal the responsibility which industrial society bears. Not only does nature’s brutality become the appliance of its aesthetic aspect, it is further crowned with the spiritlessness imparted by its epistemic facet. By undermining the significance of action, the prevailing discourse in environmental photography annihilates the medium’s very triggering mechanism. Thenceforth, apathy begins to occur of its own with every frame, in the absence of a subject which might be triggered into taking action. While members of their own species struggle to survive in the face of the same conditions, the photographer, within their own protected climate, revels in the aesthetic pleasure of disaster. Accordingly, these mass visual narratives document not only climate change, but the indifference of the smallest units within a corrupt social system as well.
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Spoiling the mood as an urgent necessity. Photography may be incapable of cleansing the atmosphere by capturing the carbon emissions that smother our breath, but it is able to address, expose, and spur action. Such is precisely the task of contemporary art: to disturb, to “spoil the mood”, and to pave the way for a war of nerves to break out. Still, one cannot help but wonder: to what extent could subjects, tamed as they are by the overwhelming quantity of raw images of disaster that swarm us, be affected by this fictitious disturbance art might supposedly induce?
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Sustainable development. If the need for sustainability is indeed a plain indicator of the current situation’s unsustainability, then art has no choice but to clear the way for this unsustainability’s suppression. It follows that, against the reproduction of fantasies which conceal reality, it must represent reality itself.
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Catharsis. Those who refuse to turn their cameras towards beautiful sunny days may provide us with a manner of Archimedean point, against the climate’s visual reproduction.
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Deciphering the anthropo-photogenic message. The path that leads to rescuing environmental photographs from being mere aesthetic displays extends beyond the mere addition of captions. In other words, the issue is not limited to issuing technical regulations intended to enhance photographic literacy. Prior to considering how a photograph should be interpreted, one should question how, by whom, and for which purposes photographs are contrived. From my standpoint, what matters is not individual photographers, collectives, or the assembly of their works, but the mass visual productions enabled by information technologies. While exercising one of their most fundamental rights within cyberspace, that of expressing themselves, subjects are eager to behave as though they never inhaled polluted air, as though what befalls them was but ordinary drops of rain, and to propagate its message according to such a framework, simply because that is what everyone else does: those whom we love, those whom we strive to get our claws into, and those institutions where we are compelled to put in an appearance... There is nothing more natural than keeping up with collective intelligence, but then again, there is nothing as destructive as an industrially tamed collective conscience either. No positive outcomes are to be expected from such social totality. Having infiltrated until our most fundamental needs, a virus has become so ordinary and commonplace that it can no longer be reduced to such notions as a status symbol. The compulsion to conform to societal expectations has always existed, but never before had the prerequisites for an individual's social standing been as life-threatening as they presently are. The face-to-face, verbal and performative interactions which humanity had set up in communal physical spaces are gradually being converted into distant, visual, and digital forms as they are transferred into cyberspace. Communication, humanity's most primitive, and in essence altogether innocent activity, is currently evolving into a go-between, insidiously destroying its own species, both on a collective and individual level. In every respect, communication now serves no other purpose than that of concealing all evidence of the crime being committed against nature. Images of everyday life, which the implementation of this course of action hinges on, permeate every second of our time within the digital environment. So much so that the euphoria of hope which we are currently witnessing, funded by the industry, does not tolerate even the slightest message that should contend that things are only headed for worse. In case the necessity to set up a practical procedure for the messages communicated by the arts and media has arisen, there could not be a more efficient method than to push the very boundaries of this tolerance.
We are well aware of exactly where, and under which conditions, this mass hysteria takes shape, just as microorganisms thrive within a specific temperature range: in the climatic capsules of capitalist modernity (5), which is to say, high-rise public housing buildings, inside the glass-windows of air-conditioned, well sheltered flats, shopping centres, or private vehicles. Even the sweat exuded by the body obeys a socio-spatial class-based divide: the comfortable installations of gyms versus the outdoors. The fact that dominant discourses stem from such places first and foremost, and are disseminated, as digital signs, within an altogether climate-secluded environment, namely cyberspace, clearly shows us the state which the first-hand communication photography once established with nature is presently in. The most prevalent form of mass communication today is purely of a visual nature, and, accomplishing something which audial and textual communication forms could never directly allow for, voices the message that “everything is, without the shadow of a doubt, in good order”.
What has become more decisive now than used to be the case in the past is not only who photographs are taken by, but by whom these are perceived. The value of a specific photograph is determined by the way collective conscience engages with it; as is the case with everything else. Digital communities, united by a rhetoric hinging on baseless optimism, tend to interpret photographs according to the dominant discourse, without giving any consideration to how the image was structurally produced or which purposes it serves. The viral spread on social media of a photograph taken during the flood disaster that occurred in Ankara last May remarkably illustrates the sheer power of this rhetoric. In fact, we have enough evidence in our possession to state that even before an image is created, its message has already been formulated, and prepared for dissemination, by the aforementioned collective conscience. Aside from its striking beauty, the reason why this particular photograph stood out from among all those that form part of photojournalist İsmail Aslandağ's series Downpour in the Capital, is its perfect alignment with the pre-existing message, enabling the latter to pull on it as though a magnet. Magnetic force, however, possesses a dual nature, as a result of which this photograph’s unencryptedness pulls on the viewer as well. The picture in question captured a young man carrying a young woman on his back across a flooded street. The grainy distortion, pronounced exclusively on the man’s feet, expresses not only the latter’s movement, but his very struggle against the flood as well. Wearing a smile on his face, this man confidently divides the waters’ spate as he marches forward. Under the reflections of the distant yellow-hued lights in the background, the stream of water appears as though it merely flowed down the street for the sake of this romantic couple rather than as a consequence of the flood itself. As for the raindrops, they seem to have been coerced into striking a pose, as though they had absolutely nothing to do with disaster. Thus, both the climate change and urbanisation phenomena appear as innocent by-standers, merely happening on the path carved by humanity's holy war against nature. When defining “photogenia”, Roland Barthes stresses that signification assignment (“connotation”), rather than artistic creation, is paramount in photography. (6) Regardless of their intended purposes, photographs ultimately serve the processes of signification attribution. As is the case in every photograph, technical interventions which govern this signification attribution (“signifying effects”), such as colouring, lighting, exposure, blurring, etc., are noticeably present in this photograph as well. With all its components, this image constitutes a remarkable example of the interpretation which, by making disaster enticing, conceals the political, social, economic, and cultural consequences of climate change, in other words the anthropo-photogenic message.
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The law of misanthropy. The claim that critical environmental photography is guilty of a “misanthropic” approach (7) overlooks the destructive impact of industrial society on nature and human existence. As a matter of fact, there is perhaps nothing more misanthropic than how capitalist relations dismantle the human species’ habitat by assimilating nature as a component in its profit-generating machinery. It is no coincidence that the capitalist communication network, which both overtly and covertly harbours hatred for humanity, is becoming growingly prevalent in digital images involving praises of the human-nature relationship which are both baseless and devoid of physical reality. As a consequence of how current communication forms are being taken possession of until their very last atom and assimilated into the industrial machinery’s nano-components, every photograph generated – even those containing the most revolutionary-sided semantic content – disseminates messages which simultaneously corroborate and normalise (by likening it to natural death) the murder of nature at humanity’s hands. Such is precisely the reason why photography must cultivate misanthropy, both in spite of and for humanity.
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The Burtynsky effect. As do many of the photographs which form part of Edward Burtynsky's Manufactured Landscapes series, that which depicts nickel waste is the kind of image anyone would proudly hang in their living room, were it not for its accompanying subtext. Yet, we should understand at first glance that this small stream, flowing with its vivid, captivating orange hue, is in fact laden with heavy metals, poisoning the water, soil, and air around it. Instead, we are inclined to perceive it as a natural phenomenon; not only in order to savour its aesthetic appeal, but also due to how our denial mechanisms have overridden our very consciousness. As a result, we meld the signals emitted by the physical world with spurious aesthetic ones. While embracing this as a romantic spectacle, we remain oblivious of how we in fact we keep ingesting imperceptible doses of poison.
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