Dear colleagues,

We are delighted to announce the publication of the volume Ecologies of Photography in the American West, co-edited by Monica Bravo (Princeton) and Carolin Görgen (Sorbonne Université) with Leuven University Press.

Photography and the American West have long been culturally intertwined. Since the 19th century, iconic photographs of western landscapes—think of Carleton Watkins’s Yosemite views—have been read as inherently environmentalist. Challenging this assumption, Ecologies of Photography in the American West examines the medium’s role in documenting, profiting from, and transforming ecosystems across its varied geographies. This book brings together a diverse range of scholars and artists to trace photography’s roots in the earth and its entanglement with resource extraction and ecological rights. Timely and expansive in scope, the volume reframes the history of the region and foregrounds photography’s complicity—as well as its potential—in shaping environmental understanding. It speaks to anyone attuned to the urgent environmental conversations defining the contemporary American West.

The volume is the result of a two-day conference at the Huntington Library in 2024; it contains a dozen scholarly essays, four artist portfolios, and an afterword by Robin Kelsey. You’ll find the table of contents below; more information is available from Leuven University Press via the link above, along with an interview with the editors: https://lup.be/2026/07/monica-bravo-carolin-gorgen-ecologies-of-photography-in-the-american-west/.

With best wishes,
Carolin Görgen & Monica Bravo

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Introduction
Monica Bravo and Carolin Görgen

Chapter 1: Rethinking the History of Western American Photography
Martha A. Sandweiss

Chapter 2: Mirrors with a Memory: War, Memory, and the Western Landscape
Binh Danh

Chapter 3: (Dis)Placing Edward Weston: The Politics of Shutter Release
Monica Bravo

Chapter 4: Missing the Forest for the Trees: Pulp, Pollution, and Landscape Photography in the Pacific Northwest
Katherine Mintie

Chapter 5: Looking at Cows, Reanimating Gelatin: The Biopolitics of Photographic Emulsion
Alan C. Braddock

Chapter 6: The Death of 7000 Songbirds: Photography’s Toxic Affinities
Alice Cazenave

Chapter 7: The Nomadic Alchemist
Andrés Pardo Piccone

Chapter 8: Corn Pollen Futures: Photography, Environmental Memory, and Indigenous Sovereignty on the Navajo Nation
Will Wilson (Diné)

Chapter 9: Āina and Accession Photographs of Queen Kapi‘olani and Queen Lili‘uokalani
Emily Cornish

Chapter 10: Bedrock Mortar vs. Photograph: Nevada City Rancheria Nisenan Cosmovision and the Malakoff Hydraulic Mine
Jordan Reznick

Chapter 11: Everywhere is West
Mercedes Dorame (Tongva), with an essay by Emilia Mickevicius

Chapter 12: “Mightier than the Pen?” Amateur Photography and the Circulation of Environmental Narratives in California, 1880s–1920s
Yves Figueiredo

Chapter 13: Black Gold: Petroleumscapes in Southern California Pictorialism and Beyond
Carolin Görgen

Chapter 14: Documenting “Restless Earth”: John S. Shelton’s Photographs for Geology Illustrated (1966)
Jennifer Tucker

Chapter 15: Arctic Time: Ecology and Photography in the Ice Fields
Elizabeth Hutchinson

Afterword
Robin E. Kelsey