Wooldridge, D., 2023.

Redistributions of the Sensitized: Photographic Matter and Shifting Configurations after Mining Photography

Could the recent focus on photography's deep entanglements in the extraction of rare minerals offer new routes towards an understanding of the photographic, unshackled from the methods and critical tools that have dominated its discourses? This text explores the emergence of ecological thinking around photography, across Boaz Levin and Esther Ruelf's exhibition 'Mining Photography', to Matthew Fuller and Eyal Weizman's 'Investigative Aesthetics', to propose that recognitions in photography's participation in extractive capital requires new methods of image production. Focusing on the work of three artists, the text explores possibilities for a non-figurative, sensitive image-object which addresses its being in the world as well as its capacities for interconnection.