II. Historical Context of Art and Environmental Activism

Artists, especially photographers, environmental advocates and conservationists have worked closely together over the past century to raise awareness of environmental concerns and to protect wilderness areas.

Ansel Adams devoted his life to preserving America’s natural heritage and has extensively photographed Kings Canyon and lobbied for better protection. In 1936, a bill did not pass Congress to protect it as National Park. Adams did not give up. In 1938, he published Sierra Nevada: The John Muir Trail (Adams, 1938). The impressive book was passed from the Director of the National Park Service to the Secretary of the Interior and finally to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1940, Kings Canyon National Park was founded.

« Only rarely has the work of artists had occasion to profoundly affect government policy. But just such an interplay characterizes the impact of landscape photography on America's national park system. The work of fine photographers provided a strong visual impetus for the congressional decision […] »
John L. Bryant, Jr., President, National Park Foundation

Robert Glenn Ketchum is a landscape photographer, conservationist and author with direct impact in wilderness protection. His Tongass Rain Forest project, which began in 1985 resulted in The Tongass: Alaska's Vanishing Rain Forest two years later (Ketchum, 1987). Ketchum's personal advocacy is credited with helping to pass the Tongass Timber Reform Bill of 1990. This significant legislation established five major wilderness areas and simultaneously protected more than one million acres of old growth trees in the world’s largest temperate rain forest.

« The environmentally concerned picture books of the 1960s, certainly those published by the Sierra Club, focused on images of landscape and wildlife, but by the 1970s photographers were increasingly attentive to the direct human costs of environmental choices. »
Katherine Ware in Earth Now: American Photographers and the Environment, 2011

The evolution of environmental photography, especially documentation of environmental contamination, such as the impact from mining, has shifted away from the pure aesthetics and the sublime. Visualizing toxicity is no simple task as many pollutants are invisible (Peeples, 2011). She goes on that contaminated sites are often unremarkable.

Edward Burtynsky’s large scale prints reveal beauty, but also repel (Burtynsky, 2007). The viewer is confronted with destruction, exploitation and environmental degradation. What’s missing in Burtynsky’s work is context omitting the effect on the environment, how dangerous the pictured contaminants are and how much damage they have already created – or will create in the future. Peeples notes that Burtynsky’s lack of an explicit political agenda appears at odds to his “environmental artist” designation (Peeples, 2011). Burtynsky once revealed a desire to be portrayed not so much as an environmentalist but as an advocate for sustainable development (Burtynsky, 2016). In a review of the “Manufactured Landscapes” documentary, Dargis wrote that the film is strictly about an aesthetic subject and lacks a warning of the pollution from Chinese coal mines (Dargis 2007). In 2012, the Frist Art Museum titled an exhibition of Burtynsky photographs “The Industrial Sublime”, showing the beauty and ugliness of landscapes that have been altered by human industry. The title is a reference to “American Technological Sublime”, an exploration of the social construction of technology (Nye, 1994).

« Even as a student Burtynsky decided that the kinds of photographs depicting pristine environments were simply anachronistic. The era of the sublime - at least in its natural manifestations - was over. »
From 'A conflict of its elements' by William A. Ewing

Without direct impact, Richard Misrach's "Petrochemical America" book is still noteworthy for the collaboration with landscape architect Kate Orff (Misrach, 2014). It documents the environmental and social consequences of contamination from petrochemical industries. Misrach's stark photographs tell a visual story, where Orff’s research-based content complements the book with maps, diagrams and narratives.