Paper short abstract:

We live in a time where media culture and pollution affect people and places in disproportionate ways. Drawing on fieldwork examining Kodak chemistry, I propose that photographic practices renew ethnographic methods by reforming how anthropologists engage with spaces impacted by chemical industries.

Paper long abstract:

As a photographic artist and researcher in visual anthropology, my ethnographic and artistic experiences often coalesce. My PhD follows the minerals and chemistries used to make photographic film. I consider the overlooked materials of photographic reproduction, to extend enquiries into what photography does. This perspective helps undo the mineral blindness exhibited by anthropology in its previous engagements with photography.

Fieldwork in Rochester, New York, home of Kodak, explores social and ecological worlds that are touched by Kodak’s chemical processing. Where do photographic contaminants pool and why? How is contamination narrated?

In my arts practice, I forage and research plants growing in Kodak-contaminated spaces. I explore their agencies by engaging with them visually, materially, and chemically. Plants can bio-indicate pollution or remediate contaminants. I use chemicals extracted from plants to develop photographic artworks of polluted landscapes. Plant-based chemistries are lower-toxicity and help undo the toxic legacies of analogue photography. I use these artworks to explore experiences of toxicity through one-to-one conversations, and exhibitions.

I discuss the value of adopting photographic methods to think with as an anthropologist. For instance, photo-walks, and the routes organised through the city, reveal how photographers perceive and respond to neighbourhoods affected by Kodak pollution and crime. Making plant-chemistry with local photographers reveals how people make sense of photo-chemical worlds. These approaches work restoratively, towards undoing photographic toxicity and redoing ethnography, that is both environmental and social.

The presentation includes plant-based photographic artworks inspired by ethnographic experiences, and photographs developed with plants growing in Kodak-contaminated spaces.