An exhibition in Vienna tells the side effects of photography on the environment
Photography knows how to shock, how to terrify. The images of wars, poverty, devastation strike and leave their mark. The same goes for the photos that become a punch in the stomach when they recall the reality of climate change: the desert scenes of what used to be bodies of water, the floods, the garbage that invades the ocean shores, the retreating glaciers. All the environmental drama of our times is documented through the photographic lens. But photography itself, how sustainable is it? What is the contribution of photography production to man-made climate change? The exhibition is based on these questions Mining Photographyopen to the public until May 29, in the halls of the Kunsthaus of Viennathe first "green" museum in the Austrian capital.
How much photography pollutes
From the copper used for the first daguerreotypes, to the rare earths and cobalt present in cellphones with which digital images are produced, photographic production has never been able to do without exploiting the soil. It has always been like this. At the dawn of the history of photography, around the middle of the 19th century, Paris was an important production center for daguerreotype plates: Approximately 100 tonnes of copper was used annually, which was mainly worked in Swansea, Wales, using three to four times its own weight of coal. The working conditions for those who took care of them were precarious, theimpact on the environment huge. After the advent of gelatin-silver prints on paper, in the late 20th century thephotographic industry became the most important consumer of silver, accounting for more than half of global consumption.
And today? In the age of digital photography and smartphones, image production relies on rare earths and metals such as coltan, cobalt and europium, and image storage and distribution produce large amounts of CO2: according to estimates, digital technologies used in the transmission, reception and processing of data will contribute 8.5% of global CO emissions in 20252. All the photos that have told the history of the world have always been closely connected to the exploitation and pollution of its natural environments.
The curators of Museum for Art and Gewerbe of Hamburg, which has started the exhibition now in Vienna (and which will then go to Winterthur in Switzerland, the third partner of the project), have made an artistic and historical research at the same time, coming to define 5 materials associated with photography to tell the story of this art by associating it with its collateral damage. Five materials that have become the 5 sections of the exhibition.
In the halls of the museum designed by the ecological architect Friedensreich Hundertwasser, who systematically deals with environmental and sustainability issues within the artistic discourse in a critical and visionary way, they are exhibited with a construction of recycled and reusable materials 170 works: historical photographs, contemporary installations, video interviews with experts (a chemist, an activist, a restorer, a mineralogist and a biologist) who tell how the history of photographic art can be retraced from the perspective of its industrial production. As the curators point out, curator Boaz Levin And Esther Ruelfsthe idea behind it all is not to accuse photography of being "bad", but to use the example of photography to look at us at home, to gain awareness of the fact that climate change affects us all closely, even when we take holding the smartphone to freeze a moment on the screen forever.
