Environmental aesthetics and photographic visualizations of petro-capitalism. From industrial and toxic sublimes to the ecological sublime

Abstract

This article explores the relation between environmental aesthetics and photographic practices, through ecocritical perspectives in the field of contemporary art and visual culture. It aims to question the efficacy of the use of the sublime for visualizing contemporary environmental issues. While the Romantics used the term sublime to refer to a kind of beauty that would be terrible to experience personally but was intensely moving to see depicted in art, today’s extreme weather events create a different feeling, as they become the new normal. Photographs can have a crucial role in documenting environmental transformations, revitalizing ways of seeing in order to contribute within contemporary debates. Nonetheless, spectacular images can also risk to anesthetize our perception, hiding rather than revealing the inequalities related to climate change. I will study some photographic visualizations of oil extraction and its effects (like pollution and global warming), starting from examples of industrial and toxic sublime landscapes (Edward Burtynsky’s Oil Fields; Richard Misrach and Kate Orff’s Petrochemical America) to focus on the ecological sublime in Subhankar Banerjee’s project on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.