From the amount of planes taken to get dresses to a high end photoshoot, to the number of batteries being charged at any one time, to the food bought but never eaten just so that an aesthetically pleasing photograph can be taken, photography as an industry is hurting the environment. Of course, people have drawn attention to the negative effect that the industry has on the planet and the impact that photographers themselves are having. For example, Italian Vogue refused to create any new photographs for one issue (January 2020), in an attempt at showing how many resources are used to take photos for just one issue of a fashion magazine. They wrote about the resources used in their September issue, which is stereotypically the biggest per year, “One hundred and fifty people involved. About twenty flights and a dozen or so train journeys. Forty cars on standby. Sixty international deliveries. Lights switched on for at least ten hours non-stop, partly powered by gasoline-fueled generators. Food waste from the catering services. Plastic to wrap the garments. Electricity to recharge phones, cameras…” When you think about the fact that there are 26 different editions of Vogue per month and that each one produces its own photographs, this is a vast number of resources that are being used. This makes me question whether similar photographs couldn’t be taken nearer to where the photographer is based, or at least in the same country.
I used to flick through fashion magazines thinking how amazing it was that the latest fashion collection was being shot in a rainforest on the other side of the world from where I lived in my small town or that a number of models had been flown to Australia from the UK just so a shoot could be done in the sunshine. In The Fashion Image by Thomas Werner, he says “Fashion images are a reflection of the moral, social, technological, and economic imperatives of the era in which they were created in a way that other socio-cultural genres are not… As genres, fashion photography and fashion film are resonant forms of visual anthropology.” I had never thought about this before, and started rereading all the fashion magazines that I own. I noticed that the images provided some kind of social commentary at times on what was happening in society and this made me question why when photoshoots had some kind of environmental angle eg. clothes from a ‘sustainable’ designer, the photoshoot was still over the top and used a vast amount of resources.
Fast forward to the pandemic, and I was confined to my house and the town I grew up in. Every day I would wander the streets (when we were allowed to leave the house for fun instead of necessities) and just walk with no sense of direction or purpose. My feet just moving and my eyes taking in all the places in my town that I’d never seen. I wanted to get to know my hometown… and I also wanted to avoid being stuck between the four walls of my house. After a while, I started bringing my camera on these walks. I wanted to document the new places that I was seeing, just minutes from my house, and I really wanted to engage properly with the places around me. I wanted to form a meaningful connection with them.
Pre-covid, home was just a place I slept and charged my phone. It was never somewhere I wanted to be. I felt stifled by what I perceived as a small boring town, filled to the brim with old people and charity shops, as well as more hairdressers than anyone could ever need. But when I didn’t see anyone, and all the shops were closed, I began to really live in my environment. I got to know it. I found things that I still hated, like pavements with a vicious camber, and new things that I loved, like the fields that are at the bottom of a lane I’d never seen before. It was almost magical, the way that I became curious about my hometown, as though I was a tourist visiting for the first time. I was looking through a fresh pair of eyes and actually seeing what was around me, and also what wasn’t around me; the absence of people, cars and noise. I had previously thought my town was quiet. But during my walks, I got to experience true quietness.
The idea of ‘dwelling’ in your environment is something that Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben has talked about. “In the course of travelling around the globe with such speed and intensity, we have lost the ability to dwell (Agamben 2021: 21), seduced by the religion of money, and the possessions to which that gives us access. Our former way of life is brought into question, at least, that is the argument. Whether this will emerge in a permanent way is not so obvious once travel returns to pre-Covid-19 levels.” Giorgio Agamben is seen as controversial for a lot of his opinions, but I find it difficult to argue with this. In my opinion, social media is partially to blame for society’s inability to dwell somewhere. We are always trying to go one step further than the last person, in a never ending game of oneupmanship. Comparison is the thief of joy, but it could also be the thief of our sense of belonging somewhere.
In Visual Culture: Spaces of Visual Culture Martin Heidegger writes, “But in what does the nature of dwelling exist?.. The Old Saxon wuon, the Gothic wunian, like the old word bauen, mean to remain to stay in a place. But the Gothic wunian says more distinctly how this remaining is experienced. Wunian means: to be at peace, to be brought to peace, to remain in peace… Mortals dwell in that they save the earth… To save really means to set something free into its own presencing. To save the earth is more than exploit it or even wear it out. Saving the earth does not master the earth and does not subjugate it, which is merely one step from spoliation.”
I like how this quote talks about dwelling in the context of looking after the planet. It’s about making the most of it in a way that won’t spoil it or cause it damage. On a similar note, “curiosity” is derived from “cura”, the Medieval Latin word for care. This links back to the idea of dwelling meaning to save the Earth and by learning more about it, we are caring for it.
Nabokov said “curiosity is insubordination in its purest form”. I like this quote because it implies that curiosity means breaking away from societal norms or what is expected of you, and choosing something different. If we apply this to a photography context, the norm is to constantly travel for work and try to outdo your competitors, both in location and creativity. Being curious, if we abide by this quote, would be staying put in one place and using that to its full potential.
“Curiosity is the most superficial of all the affections; it changes its object perpetually; it has an appetite which is very sharp, but very easily satisfied; and it has always an appearance of giddiness, restlessness and anxiety. ” This quote from Edmund Burke makes me think of childlike curiosity – as a child you are encouraged to explore the places around you and you create your own narrative around them. A hill nearby could become a castle and a river could be guarded by an imaginary dragon. Children feel no need to fly around the world to satisfy their curiosity when they have what seems to be an exciting place around them. This makes me wonder at what age we lose that childish attachment to the places we live and feel like we have to travel to find somewhere more exciting to use in our work. As late as the 19th century, Feuerbach referred to the “pains [resulting from an] unsatisfied knowledge drive” (Blumenberg, 1966/1983, p. 445), suggesting that, similar to physiological appetite, he viewed curiosity as producing painful feelings of deprivation if not satisfied.
If photographers could regain this curiosity that they start life with, the industry would change completely. How can people, specifically photographers, be reconditioned to be curious about their environment, rather than an environment they’ve seen on Instagram? Can curiosity be forced or cultivated, or is it something that once lost, can never be found again? How can you see your environment through new eyes, instead of assuming you’ve seen everything already?
Bearing all this in mind, the change I would like to see is photographers, specifically within the fashion industry, making the most of the spaces and environments that they dwell in, and applying the same amount of curiosity to them as they do to foreign environments. It would also be desirable for the people assigning the briefs to do so more considerately. I think this change is desirable because it would:
1: Be better for the planet. There would be a reduction in travelling by photographers which would reduce their carbon footprint and their impact on the environment.
2: Save money for companies and photographers. Given that 93% of photographers in the UK are freelancers, travelling less would put less strain on finances and increase profit margins for these photographers.
3: Give opportunities to photographers from countries that photographers are often flown into for shoots. This would improve their career prospects and allow the photography industry to expand.
