Photography and Environmental Activism: Visualising the Struggle Against Industrial Pollution

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Notes

1 My translation. See the original in Michele Smargiassi, “Il selfie di Salgado: ‘Non sarò l'ultimo fotografo’.” La Repubblica (2023, 31 March). https://www.repubblica.it/venerdi/2023/03/31/news/sebastiao_salgado_fotografo_mostra_milano_foresta_amazzonica-394025881/ (accessed May 3, 2023).

2 Letzte Generation (Last Generation) was established in Germany in 2021 and has become known in Europe for its controversial forms of protest, such as road blockades and symbolic attacks (without permanent damage) against popular artworks and historical buildings. Moreover, together with Ende Gelände, Extinction Rebellion, and Fridays for Future, among other activist groups, Last Generation protested against expanding an open lignite mine in the German village of Lützerath in January 2023.

3 For a recent study on the entanglement of photography and global extractive capitalism, see Siobhan Angus’s research and her forthcoming book Camera Geologica (Durham: Duke University Press, 2024).

4 Jennifer Tucker’s ongoing project “Dangerous Exposures: Photography, Waste and the Chemical Revolution in Victorian Britain” similarly argues for the use of early photography as evidence in environmental science and pollution reform.

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Notes on contributors

Noemi Quagliati

NOEMI QUAGLIATI, PhD, is a lecturer in history of art and photography at the Amerika-Institut of Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München and a visiting postdoctoral scholar at Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society in Munich, Germany. Noemi is also a member of the Research Institute for the History of Science and Technology of the Deutsches Museum, where she has collaborated on modernizing the museum’s historical aviation section by investigating the topic of aerial photography. [email protected]