Competing constructions of nature in early photographs of vegetation : negotiation, dissonance, subversion
Date
28/06/2018Author
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Abstract
While the role of photography in enforcing hegemonic ideologies has been amply
studied, this thesis addresses the under-researched topic of how photography undermined
dominant narratives in specific historical circumstances. I argue that, in the later part of
the long nineteenth century, photographs were used to represent the natural world in
contexts where their functions were uncertain and their capacities not clearly defined, and
that these hesitations allowed for the expression of resistances to dominant social
attitudes towards nature.
I analyse how these divergences were articulated through three independent case
studies, each addressing a corpus of photographs which has been marginalised in
scholarly discourse. The case studies all concern photographs of vegetation. The first one
discusses photographs produced around Fontainebleau during the Second French
Empire, commonly understood as auxiliary materials for Barbizon painters, and argues
that they were in fact autonomous representations, reflecting marginal modes of
experiencing nature which resisted its prevailing construction as spectacle. The second
case study examines a photographic series depicting Amazonian vegetation, published
between 1900 and 1906, and shows how, in attempting to satisfy conflicting ideological
demands, these photographs undermined the hierarchies enforced upon the natural world
by colonial science. The third case study analyses photographs from an early twentieth-century
environmentalist treatise, and demonstrates how, while the author's discourse
seemingly complied with conventional attitudes towards nature, the photographs
instituted an ethical stance opposed to early conservation's aesthetic focus and
anthropocentrism.
Throughout the case studies, I argue that the photographs were consubstantial to
the emergence of these resistances; that dissenting representations stemmed from a
tension between their producers' lived experience and the ideological frameworks which
informed each context; and that this process engendered remarkable formal innovations,
which are not usually associated to non-artistic images. I contend that radical renewals of
visual expression occur in all representational contexts, as image producers adapt their
tools or forge new ones according to circumstances, and that more attention must be paid
to such visual innovations outside the field of artistic production.
Type
Thesis, PhD Doctor of Philosophy
Rights
Embargo Date: 2023-01-15
Embargo Reason: Thesis restricted in accordance with University regulations. Print copy restricted until 15th January 2020. Electronic copy restricted until 15th January 2023
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