The analogue: Analogue photography as an analogy for earth processes

Historically, photography has been used as a tool to understand the world, shaping cultural perception of all that it captures. It is landscape photography that frames and constructs our view - or our projection - of nature. Human positionality is often about separation and the primacy of human culture, despite the fact that humans are part of nature. Our perception of non-human nature is filtered through photographic representations that reinforce this primacy of human agency. Could a new vision of "landscape" emerge from photography if it is thought of as a material - as matter - rather than a representational medium and a discipline? This paper proposes to use analogue photography as an analogy for earth processes in order to conceptually collapse the space between photo-media and nature. I use the term "analogue" to refer to non-digital, chemically-based photographic processes that use compounds such as: silver iodide (calotype), silver halide (silver-gelatine, chromogenic prints), silver nitrate and mercury (daguerreotype, wet-plate collodion), and ammonium iron citrate and potassium ferricyanide (cyanotype). Processes where the image is latent, or invisible, until it undergoes a chemical development.