Introduction

The introduction to the book 'Disturbed Ecologies' contextualises the contributions. The book is in the form of an edited anthology of essays selected to offer a range of approaches that examine the critical role of visual culture in shaping and interrogating conceptions of ecological crisis, in relation to the northern imaginary. This is a broad field but the focus is largely but not exclusively on landscape photography, a medium particularly sensitive to the politics of place and difference. At its most challenging and critical the visual culture of place is able to represent a complexity and heterogeneity frequently absent or displaced within dominant discourses of environmental catastrophe. Conversely, many images of landscape and place within both fine art practice and commercial and popular forms play a role in supporting a more conventional interpretation of environmental crisis. It is our argument that images of northern places and landscapes have a pivotal function within the geopolitics of visual representation, and through the production of different visual imaginaries. Such images can typically exclude any reference to the everyday consequences of ecological crisis for heterogeneous populations; common strategies involve the inclusion of images of pristine wilderness as well as melancholic representations of man-altered landscapes and environmental damage and of an alternative sublime of eco-catastrophe in which scenes of ecological violence are invested with an awe-inspiring, perverse beauty. The findings of the research detailed in the various chapters suggest that the visual culture of northern places has not remained static in the era of ecological crisis but has played a dynamic role within this broad discursive field. Northern landscape photography can still give visual form to historically settled conceptions of a natural world, but these images are frequently placed within a context of human mastery and thus sanction the latter’s purported achievements; and ubiquitous representations of environmental disaster can also reinforce the notion of its techno-utopian resolution. Contributions to the book explore this visual field, presenting wide-ranging critical appraisals of landscape photography and its related practices, particularly more recent developments in art and visual culture in relation to the representation of place.