Call for Papers: Ecologies of Photography: More-Than-Human Perspectives

Edited by Cristina Baldacci and Noemi Quagliati

 

This issue aims to investigate the conditions under which it is possible to speak of an ‘ecology’ of photography.

Susan Sontag was ahead of her time when, in the late 1970s, she highlighted the material reality of photographs, defining the image as an infinite source of information to be protected from consumerist abuse and therefore reimagined in an ecological light.

More recent scholarship and artistic practices that are redefining the history of photography have embraced and further developed Sontag’s insight. They have shifted focus from a linear account of styles, technological innovations, and documentary practices to a (plural) material history that examines the medium’s entanglements with subterranean resources, animal and plant derivatives, and chemical pollutants. These are elements situated within broader systems of capitalist development, which reveal photography’s close relationship with the Anthropocene (or, more precisely, the Capitalocene) – that is, with colonial and extractive policies and with the ecological degradation caused by humankind.

Building on these premises, this issue explores the various ‘ecologies’ of both analogue and digital photography. It demonstrates how environmental concerns are redefining the history, theory, and practice of the medium, particularly from a ‘more-than-human’ perspective, highlighting its deep entanglement with ecological, biological, and geological processes.

Indeed, cameras, as well as image-production materials and infrastructures, rely on mineral extraction, toxic chemicals, and high energy consumption. Photography is thus embedded in global circuits of resource exploitation and waste, even more so following its digital turn. Mass production and image archiving raise urgent questions regarding the sustainability of new technologies, their fragility and rapid obsolescence, and the environmental cost of contemporary visual culture. At the same time, photography remains a powerful tool for making the invisible visible: from documenting environmental injustice to monitoring climate change. It plays an ambivalent role: on one hand, it exposes the ecological crisis; on the other, it contributes to exacerbating it.

A complementary perspective to consider when studying the ecology of photography in an era of hyperproduction and hyperdiffusion of images is the co-evolution between humans and machines, which opens up a new visual temporality or heterochrony (in this sense, Peter Szendy has recently coined the neologism “iconomy”). Automated systems, operatorless image-making technologies, and generative algorithms – ranging from surveillance drones to AI-generated photographs – challenge traditional notions of artistic authorship and visual intentionality, intensifying the debate on computer vision and photography as a form of information technology, and shifting the focus from photography’s representational role to its functional or ‘operational’ role. The excessive production and proliferation of these images heighten the debate over photography's sustainability and incentivize practices of appropriating and reusing pre-existing images, redirecting scholarship toward how images are produced, circulated, and received.

This issue invites contributions from scholars and artist-theorists that, from a non-anthropocentric perspective, examine not only how photography has depicted, studied, and polluted the world, but also how ecological conditions, material constraints, and more-than-human agencies have influenced photographic practices, aesthetics, and discourses. The goal is to examine photography as an intersection of distinct environmental, social, technological, and visual-artistic histories that can generate new critical frameworks and insights for understanding the medium and its derivatives (film/moving images, virtual, and/or augmented reality).

Possible areas of inquiry include:

• Post-anthropocentric photography: diverse more-than-human perspectives
• The materiality of photography in relation to subterranean resources and animal/plant derivatives
• The environmental and social implications of the photographic industry in the context of global extractive capitalism
• The environments of photography (e.g., production sites, darkrooms, photo-editing software)
• Photography beyond the concept of authorship: collaborative human and more-than-human/non-human practices (e.g., camera-based and camera-less photographic practices)
• Photography as a correlation between different organisms, environments, and technologies
• Experimental photographic techniques and gender inclusivity; female labour in the photographic industry
• Operatorless image-production systems and generative photographic processes
• The fragility of photographic images: challenges in preservation, archiving, and digitization
• Technical obsolescence and the lifecycle of photographic media
• Photography and extinction
• Photography, environmental humanities, and activism

Submission Guidelines

The journal accepts complete contributions only (30,000–40,000 characters, including notes and spaces), submitted according to the instructions below. The issue editors will evaluate submissions and select those to be sent for double-blind peer review. The editorial board will inform authors of the outcome.

Authors must submit their manuscripts through the journal’s online platform using the 5-step submission process.

The uploaded file must contain the full manuscript text without the author’s name appearing under the title, in footnotes, or in bibliographic references (where it should be replaced with ***). The file must be fully anonymized; the author’s name must not be disclosed in any way, nor should any references allow the author to be identified. Otherwise, the submission will not be considered. Additionally, personal details must be removed from the file properties using the anonymization functions provided by word processing programs (refer to the instructions on Ensuring a Double-Blind Peer Review).

The anonymized manuscript file must be uploaded at Step 2 of the submission process. The text must strictly conform to the journal’s formatting guidelines.

Submission metadata must be entered at Step 3 and include the following:

1. For each author: full name, email address, ORCID ID (if available), institutional affiliation, country, and a short bio (maximum 1,000 characters, including spaces);
2. Title;
3. Abstract (maximum 1,500 characters, including spaces);
4. Five keywords separated by semicolons.

Submissions are accepted in Italian, English, and French. For submissions in Italian or French, the title and abstract must also be provided in English via the ‘Form Language/Lingua dei moduli’ feature on the platform.

Submissions sent via other methods will not be considered.

 

Timeline

Submissions must be received by 12 February 2027. Every manuscript will undergo a double-blind peer review process. If the evaluations of the two reviewers conflict, the editors-in-chief (in dialogue with the guest editors) will decide whether to make a final decision or send the text to a third reviewer. The editorial team will contact authors with the outcome of the evaluation.

 

Publication of Vol. 14, No. 1 is scheduled for June/July 2027.