Blue Mud: Entangled Geologies and Lives of Photographic Silver in the United States
Abstract
Silver grounds the magic of analogue photography; it is the essential light-sensitive element of photographic negatives. Silver exists in specific territories and is mobilised across the globe to enable media culture, and we live in a critical time where media culture and pollution are affecting people and places in disproportionate ways. Located in Nevada and New York in the United States, fieldwork engaged with silver miners, Kodak chemists, environmental agencies, photographers, and Hodinöhšö:ni (Haudenosaunee) peoples, to explore colonial histories of silver processing, its toxicity, ,and how it changes ecologies and worlds. This research combines foraging, experimental photography, and ethnography to produce a series of artworks that reflect on how photographic materiality entangles with the Anthropocene. Many disciplines use visual media to help us understand the Anthropocene, but this project uncovers hidden relations between images and environments, looking at the materials that constitute media, and how these contribute to the Anthropocene in delayed and dispersed ways.