Surveying the Anthropocene: Environment and Photography Now

Surveying the Anthropocene presents a range of approaches to image-making concerning the environment by some of the best artist-photographers working worldwide, alongside texts by some of the most illuminating writers on environmental questions, at a pivotal moment in the human relationship with the planet. Photographic approaches to environmental imagery have altered fundamentally in recent decades, largely as a result of increasing socio-ecological awareness. This insightful international survey, with a strong representation from Scotland, considers the varied range of current working practices of a representative selection of artist-photographers, both renowned and emerging, whose image-making explores human-caused environmental change. It concentrates particularly on work which relates to the types of impact, on climate and the web of life, that are sufficiently significant and globally widespread to appear in the future record of the rocks as a new geological epoch – the Anthropocene. The concept of the Anthropocene has engaged the attention and imagination of a wide range of commentators from very different backgrounds and walks of life. It therefore provides an excellent context in which to discuss, in an open and cross-disciplinary way, the range of responses of artist-photographers and cultural writers to our present global situation of multiple, interconnected environmental and social crises – and the options for human ingenuity in addressing these.