Many of my prior formal projects were contained to a year-long exploration into a question. Portraits on Estrangement let me dip into the realities around parental estrangement experiences. Womxn without Children fostered conversations around societal expectations on womxn who don’t take on the identity of mother. However, this project, In Perpetuity (name pending), has invited me to wander around in death for several years.

It began in 2024 while driving out to visit my mom in the middle of Texas. It wasn’t our first road trip out that way, but it was the first one where the increasing number of road side cemeteries off the highways caught my attention.

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My instinctual response was, “They’re so close to the road. How does anyone visit in peace?” I’m learning that they mostly don’t visit. When I approached my mom about this Texan phenomena she said something to the effect of, “Oh, yeah. There’s a lot of them about out here. You should see the one in the Tractor Supply parking lot!”

Yes, of course, we went and saw the historical cemetery in the Tractor Supply parking lot. It was wild. A perfect mixing of sacred ground and commerce.

One thing led to another and I was fully in on this idea of documenting cemeteries in odd spaces, long forgotten, or inconvenient to advancement. I’ve discovered cemeteries next to brand new housing developments (complete with a view from the back yard!), cemeteries near crazy clown motels (thanks, Teresa!), and cemeteries that feel more like Disneyland, on the opposite end of the spectrum of my explorations.

I’ve covered a lot of ground, and I have a few more western cemeteries to document this summer. That’s where your support comes in. You’re helping me cover the time and costs of making this work — good work about hard things. Because this project needs to be made now while we’re on the cusp of sweeping changes in technology where the quieter parts of our lives, the limitations of humanity, are being gobbled up by AI companies and private equity firms.

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I’ve had a couple opportunities to do test runs on photographs from this project, including the one in this post. I printed it at 60”x40” and put it behind museum glass (no reflection) in a 2” white wood frame. Last year it exhibited in the Biola University show I curated called Now is Always. It became a central part of the show. The conversations that flowed from that singular photograph from the project convinced me to carry on with the project when I was feeling less sure about it.

I’ve done a lot of research around the death industry since starting this project — including a private tour at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California (now that was WILD). And I’m becoming more certain that the time for this project is now. Now may be always, but now is pertinent to our unfolding cultural reshaping.

I’ll save my final thoughts on this project for its official release, but I’ll conclude here in saying: meditating on death could save us from our own destruction. God willing.

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My flabbers were ghasted as these little tid bits of common seminary knowledge flowed in and through my learning experience. I felt shell shocked learning these things: If this was all so true how had I never heard it before? I’d attended evangelical churches my entire life. I’d finally had enough one day when a professor told us the whole Revelation thing. I raised my hand and did the only thing my brain seems to comprehend in moments like these — I asked a question.

“If we know all this then why isn’t it preached in church?”

Hold my iced coffee and I’ll tell you what he shared.

This blessing of a human who changed my life for the better said (in my heavily paraphrased version): because either the pastor was a personality hire and never learned these things, or the pastor doesn’t know how to present it in a way that the congregation can handle it.

TLDR: most people aren’t biblically literate (or spiritually mature) enough to handle it.

I was livid, not at my professor, but of the blatant infantilization of maybe millions of evangelical church attending Christian’s who’d been robbed of knowledge because someone else didn’t think these adults en masse could handle it. I wondered: Isn’t the church’s job to help people become spiritually mature enough to handle complex information? It turns out, yes, that is Christ’s call. But in a church assembled in a capitalist system where the pastors and staff are reliant on the tithes of the people attending the church, truth telling has financial consequences. And as my dad used to say, “It’s better to go along to get along.” Or, as my pastor of the church experience that sent me raging into seminary: “Don’t rock the boat.”

I believe most evangelical pastors are well-meaning and want their families fed and their congregations spiritually nourished. There are others however that also like shiny things and expensive footwear. But in my years as a kid church brat, and then as a staff member married to someone in a pastoral role, I saw how the sausage gets made. Even well meaning pastors are pushed up against a wall between making their building rent payments with declining tithes if they say too many uncomfortable truths from the pulpit.

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Years after seminary, and a Master in Fine Arts, I started teaching art classes at a few universities. When I started at one school I was offered an option of what I wanted to teach: a Fine Art Photography class or a History of Photography class. My no hesitation jump on the history class was pure instinct.

As I prepared the class I looked for a structure to help me achieve one of the learning outcomes in the syllabus: visual literacy. In the meantime I built my slides with various historically important figures and photographers. I came across Samuel J. Miller’s portrait of Frederick Douglass.1

Douglass understood the power of photography before a lot of people did. As an anti-slavery advocate, writer, orator, and activist he had his portrait made 160 times. In a day where most people had none due to the cost and inaccessibility of the technology, this is particularly remarkable.

His portraits, made throughout his lifetime, are striking. Consistently across them he wears fine clothes, a bold stare, and a serious countenance.3 His portraits display that all humans possess the image of God and are equally human; a powerful counter-claim to those advocating for slavery on the basis of eugenics.4

When I began thinking about how to teach Douglass’ photographic impact, the concept of the 4-Questions of Power came to me:

1. Who is the photographer?

2. Who’s in the photograph?

3. How did the photograph come to be?

4. Where did the money flow?

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These four simple questions unlock our ability to read the images and gather their context, historically and culturally, before we assess them. As I tell my students, we must first understand what the photographs are trying to say before we can form an opinion based on what we like or do not like about them. We must understand before we can assess. This is exactly what my New Testament professor taught me about reading Scripture: we must first understand what it meant to the original audience before we can begin to sort out any possible application it may hold for Christians today. What was happening in the world at the time it was written, who it was being written to, and how influence impacted what was written are all critical pieces of being biblically literate.

What many churches today preach, whether they’re directly aware of it or not, is akin to my teaching only the formal aspects of any photograph. Stating that simply Douglass’ portraits are technically beautiful and powerful with his direct gaze is only the top layer of meaning. Understanding historically what was happening in his lifetime, alongside of how photography was emerging, are critical pieces of information my students need to become visually literate. Similarly, our churches need to take the risk and teach a fuller biblical literacy that includes the pieces without easy or neat answers. That may invite other difficult changes, like changing the financial systems many evangelical churches use today.

We need to challenge ourselves spiritually and trust that God is calling us through the narrow path to something better on the other side.

Growing up my family was deeply active in the evangelical Christian church. We attended one to two services a week, my parents were involved in various music ministries, and sometimes employed where we attended. As an adult I began attending my own evangelical church where I got heavily into ministry. I also ended up working there after I graduated from college. Eventually I met my spouse at that same place I called home for a decade.

Ten years in and that church crumbled. I had questions. And lots of strong feelings.

I was angry. As a child I saw, firsthand, churches split and fall apart from fraud and sex scandals. When I finally got to select my own church I thought it was the exception. And then it suddenly wasn’t.

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I didn’t have a word for it at the time, but in retrospect I was deconstructing what I had been told, and believed, about church and my childhood religious structure. I took my angry questions to seminary. I’m fortunate that the place where I studied made room for those angry questions and even helped me better understand why my own church (and so many others) fell apart. I allowed myself to feel the anger and devastation of that loss around the expectation of what church was supposed to be and who I was supposed to be within it. On the other side I found something truer — acceptance and a sober hope.

When I exited seminary the shape of my faith was wildly different from when I had entered. And when I left my cohort affirmed my vocation as an artist (a gift I didn’t even know to ask for). In my time in seminary I grew a deeper attachment to Jesus and the idea of intimate community, and removed my rose-colored glasses around the infallibility of the church the way patriarchy-built it, outside the wisdom of Jesus.

Fast forward a decade and a half. Today I saw a reel by creator . You can view their post here:

Pagani addresses the kind of grief one feels when “… the systems we used to rely on … start crumbling.” Pagani goes on to say that grief extends beyond the thing or system we lost itself, and extends, existentially, to grief around our own identity. Who we thought we were going to become, in the idea of a reality itself, crumbles. It wrecks us. Reflecting back to my own journey in religious deconstruction this checks.

When I heard Pagani describe how this current moment in time feels so exhausting, yet misunderstood, my “a-ha” moment sprang into action. Pagani describes this tiredness as grief over lost futures, which is a significant part of deconstruction. I realized that deconstruction of religion as a system is so similar to the deconstruction any idea, system, or structure.

Pagani goes on to say, “Entire plots of possible futures, aspirations, hopes and beliefs we reinforced for decades, are melting like snow in the sun.” Pagani is talking about the grief of this current moment, the melting idealization of what many thought America was; and the parallels to the grief in deconstruction are prominent. The conclusion Pagani offers is to acknowledge the loss, to speak it out loud, and to let go of the future you believed you would live in go. To do so successfully, though, we must also feel the loss of that future deeply.

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Deconstruction of any kind — whether it be religious, democratic, or otherwise — requires a kind of brutal self honesty. Moving through deconstruction in hopes of finding a new path forward (reconstruction), while not becoming trapped in the justified rage of it all, requires looking at what is with a sober mind, then allowing yourself to grieve what was supposed to be.

In seminary I grieved the future evangelicalism promised me. I learned over the next decade how to let that false promise go; I learned how to embrace a more grace-filled future with Jesus that looks vastly different than I ever could have imagined.1

The reality we are living in this moment is not fair. It’s filled with terrors, horrors, and unimaginable evil. This isn’t the version of America that many of us thought we lived in when we were growing up.2 Back then, futures were advertised as bright and opportunity-filled for all who sought them out (even if that was not so for many Americans). The reality of this moment is opposite of how many of us were told it was supposed to be. That should make you angry. Feel it. Look at it. Grieve the loss.

I have gone through — and come out on the other side with Jesus — a religious systems deconstruction. I am now entering a new kind of deconstruction around what I thought America was (and how wrong I was about it). I can only invite you into the darkness with me: to see the loss, to get angry over what is and has been for a very long time, and to grieve what you were told/hoped/believed America was.

Maybe then, one day, we can find the hope to build something new together again.

Lectures in this course always begin with a historical contextualization. We acknowledge the major historical events that happen during the time line we’re exploring, then move on to a handful of photographers and their most significant works. This past week photographers Annie Leibovitz and Thomas Struth were on opposite ends of my lecture deck.

We started with Leibovitz and toured through a photograph she made earlier in her career of Leo DiCap (as I refer to him), and then moved into the presidential family portrait of the Obama’s from 2009. Leibovitz, an industry icon, was not a surprising choice for the Obama family’s first official White House portrait. She’s known for her beautifully lit portraits of the culturally famous and powerful. This portrait of the Obama family is no exception.

Except it was heavily criticized when it was released for being too casual and not representative of the power and dignity of the office. Obama’s lack of coat, and the casual interaction between the family members, were points of contention. However, this is the entire point of this portrait. Leibovitz and the Obamas (and I’m sure his entire team) collaborated to create a portrait of the first family that felt accessible. In the context of his campaign Obama ran on the messaging of hope and change. It should be no surprise then that the optics coming from his presidential office would follow suit — the photographs released would also look and feel different from earlier administrations.

In creating the casual family portrait, despite being made in the Green Room at the White House, Leibovitz tightly cropped out much of the stately room. The focus, and messaging, are clear: the Obama family is like any other American family. Accessible.

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As my lecture carried on I told the students to keep the Obama portrait in the back of their mind. Several slides later we came upon Thomas Struth, a photographer known for his images of sweeping spaces. Perhaps a bit oddly, Struth was selected as the photographer for a royal family session in 2011.

Keeping the historical context in mind, we discussed first how this portrait felt. Students used words like: wealthy, distant, cold, filled with shadows. Yes, correct. All excellent observations. Then we discussed why they felt those things.

I first addressed Struth’s choice with the royal family to position Queen Elizabeth slightly forward into the foreground establishing her position of power. The lighting also heavily favors her, and at the same time casts her husband of over 60-years in to a fairly deep shadow slightly behind her.

Color also plays an important role in the photograph. Prince Philip’s dark suit further de-centers him in the photograph, where Queen Elizabeth’s light teal dress sets her in a kind of highlight that reflects the studio strobes used on the viewer’s left.

Unlike the Leibovitz portrait of the Obamas, there’s no attempt to minimize the wealth of the royal family. Struth is not attempting in any way to make the Queen appear accessible. Nice enough, maybe, but not like you and me.

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Finally, the space between the Queen and her husband feels a mile wide on a very tiny gold gilded love seat. Compared with the Obama family who are draped over and touching one another. One portrait shows a family connected. The other, a cold distance.

After, we summarized differences in photographic approach, what the desired messages were by all involved, and again how the students (now armed with some understanding) felt about each. Students expressed a spectrum of feelings and opinions from stable to familiar and lots in between.

So I left them with a final question. I’ll do the same for you: If our current American presidential family were to have a family portrait made today, which do you think it would more closely resemble? And why?

I worked at Tuttle Cameras for over 10-years. While I worked here photography was in an incredibly transitional state – moving from analog to fully incorporating DSLR’s for the very first time. That experience left me feeling very photographically ambidextrous. Over the years I maintained an excellent relationship with Tuttles.

Fast forward to the middle of 2020, as a newly minted MFA with no idea what I c/would do next I turned to what many photographers did during this time: making photographs on film. It was an intuitive turn for me – spirit led even. The slowed pace of the world, mixed with a high level of uncertainty, led me to feeling like the instant intangibility of near perfect digital images wasn’t scratching the itch it once had. I was craving something that felt more tangible. I longed for something I could hold in my hands.

After I ran through my own supply of film at home, I went where I went nearly every time I needed a new roll: Tuttle Cameras. When I arrived I expected the familiar shelves and refrigerator behind the checkout counter to be full of its usual yellow, green, and purple graphically designed boxes. Instead, they the cupboards were bare. No Kodak, no Ilford, no Fujifilm. I deeply was confused. Where had all the film gone?

I found the owner, an old friend at this point, and asked him where it had all gone? With a wide eyed expression he told me they couldn’t keep it in stock. In all is years at Tuttle Cameras he (nor I) had ever seen a day when supply couldn’t match demand. In fact, only months prior to the lockdowns many major film manufacturers were retiring films stocks left and right. And now? They were in high demand, and virtually every film seller in Southern California were out of stock. It took me several weeks to catch an inventory shipment on arrival to get a few rolls in my own hot little hands.

I asked Eric what he made of the surge in demand. He noted that many of the film buyers were younger photographers. He shared there was also a recent increase in print orders. The realization we came to was that younger generations who grew up with screens in their faces and in their hands than our own were facing the COVID-19 crisis were trying to find something that felt real and solid in a moment where life felt anything but certain.

They wanted to hold their something important in their hands.

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My goal today is to invite and cultivate a curiosity about the old ways of analog photography. Not because they are old, or for some purist sentimentality. My goal in fostering this curiosity is because from what I’ve seen: the physicality offered in analog photographic practice touches a piece of us that cannot be touched with screens, megapixels (no matter how many), and algorithms alone.

My thesis: making something with your hands can transform who you are as a creative, as a photographer, and as a human being.

The only reason photographs haven’t changed the world yet is because WE DON’T KNOW HOW TO LOOK AT THEM

– Ariella Azoulay, The Civil Contract of Photography

I pivot into the rest of my presentation with this quote because it has been a centralizing concept that is now grounded in my creative and teaching practices.

It frames how I approach my History of Photography class in teaching the visual literacy skills needed to reach photographs – past and present – well and with integrity.

It frames how I approach my creative work, understanding that hand holds to the audience to understanding the work in the context in which it’s presented make it more effective visual communication.

And I would add, that not only do we generally not know how to look at photographs well, we don’t know how to read them in the context of how visual communication has rapidly changed in our society over the past 5, 50, and 150 years.

Imagine a time not so long ago when the constructed images you saw were primarily in newspapers and on billboards.

Imagine a time not so long ago when you saw the scope of your physical existence for the first time.

Imagine a time not so long ago when creating family photographs of everyday moments were a rare treasure – often seen as a gift.

Fast forward to today (jump scare!) where photographic images are everywhere … even, as of 2025 some cars are now capable of playing advertisements on your center console.

Consider for a moment: how many images (still or moving) have you seen this morning? This week? This year? The number becomes incalculable.

Do you feel like you’re confidently able to interpret each of those images? I can’t always do that at rapid succession. There’s simply too many.

That doesn’t mean that we aren’t being impacted by them.

The content of any medium blinds us to the character of the medium.

– Marshall McLuhan, The Medium is the Message

From my perspective, in the race to make photography bigger, faster, better, stronger collectively we’ve lost the plot. Or, at least, we’ve forgotten what photographic images do to us.

Media theorist Marshall McLuhan wrote: The content of any medium blinds us to the character of that medium.

Our temptation is to get overwhelmed by the volume of images we see, and by the impressive quality and speed at which they can be made today. However, this reduces or ceases altogether our informed reading of them. Photographs are visual communication – there is something to be read and understood in a photograph – that we are taking in, whether we know it consciously or not.

How’d we get here? Here is the shortest history of early photographic technology (ever):

• Daguerreotype: single, positive image (beautiful, laborious, hand crafted items)

• Silver Gelatin Sheets: single, reproducible negative (easier to access, but still required level of access to chemicals and specialized equipment)

• Celluloid Roll Film: multiples quickly, highly reproducible (highly accessible with many options to export the labor and expertise of creating a photograph – think disposable cameras and 1-hour Fotomats)

Put succinctly photography’s forward trajectory took it from: Single Non-Reproducible Image at Slow Speeds > Many Reproducible Images made Quickly

Now, remember McLuhan’s words: when we are highly impressed with a technology (like photography) we can lose sight of how it’s shaping us as people.

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Images are coming at us so fast and so often that our visual literacy skills simply cannot keep up. And the volume of images isn’t slowing down anytime soon. Estimates for 2025 from one agency predict over 2-trillion images for 2025 (I suspect that number may be too low, if we include images generated with AI assistance)

So how do we prepare our students for this reality?

So how do we avoid our descent into a image saturated society where photographs mean nothing? Or where students are not able to distinguish what is real any longer?

How do we empower our students to develop their skill of reading of images, to grow their visual literacy?

How do we re-invite our students to embrace the imperfect messiness of making?

Well, I’m glad you asked! (I have a few thoughts!)

One solution: is we introduce them to analog photographic processes.

A bit of context: CBU-Photography is an incredible digital-based program that prepares our students to enter the industry prepared to embark on their own freelance and corporate photo-based and creative careers.

Let’s talk about one antidote I’ve discovered, through a case study of a class I taught last semester:

In Spring 2025 I taught a special topics course at CBU (with a way too long title) called: Christian Spirituality and the Photographic Process: Exploring the Theology of Image Making.

While we have had students in the past self-initiate their own independent learning with b/w 35mm film (even building out a miniature darkroom in an unused bathroom in campus), there hasn’t been a formal way for students to learn about analog processes prior.

The upper division special topics class – offered exclusively to juniors and senior – served as an opportunity to introduce students to a new way (for most of them) of making photographs through analog and alternative processes.

Students received guided instruction on how to photograph with 120mm film on Holga cameras, and develop their own b/w film. Students were also invited to explore cyanotype process, and creating digital negatives to print with the cyanotype process.

Throughout the semester students also self selected from a provided bibliography of books, such as:

• Why Photography Matters (Thompson), Camera Lucida (Bartes), Photography & Belief (Strauss) and others

The readings gave students an opportunity to be reflective on what they learned as they engaged with these new to them types of photo making. Students later reflected that the reading helped give them the language needed to articulate their learning.

The semester culminated in an exhibit at the Riverside Art Museum, just down the road. Their works were curated and installed, with the show opening during an early 2025 Art Walk event.

That reflects both the students’ photographic development and their evolving theology of making, articulated through an advanced spiritual and theoretical framework.

Their works were accompanied by short artist statements about their making from the semester.

While my hopes were high for the impact this class may have on some students. Early in the semester I could see that many of the students were ‘hooked’ you might say from the jump – some even integrating analog making into their senior projects as a result.

What I was not expecting was how it affected them so deeply – or so personally.

I’m going to share now anonymous reflections from a few of their feedback surveys. Please keep in mind that because it was an upper division course, the students you’re hearing from were all juniors and seniors, predominantly photography majors with a few photo minors as well.

There is something deeply personal and physical about film photography — it demands your presence, attention, and intentionality at every stage.

It has taught me about surrender on a spiritual level. The light is beyond your control.

Working with … non-digital processes reminded me to slow down and be intentional. These forms require patience and care, which helped me see photography as more than just a technical skill — [it’s] a personal and emotional practice rooted in who I am.

I’ve come to understand that photography is as much about the journey as it is about the final image.

And no, I didn’t pay these students to say these things! I was blown away by what they were able to articulate about what they learned in this course.

After the semester I spent time reflecting on how something so simple as b/w film process and cyanotype could invoke such profound experiences for these students. My hopes were fulfill – but how did it work?

What I realized was that the tangibility of analog and alternative process photography beckons us back to be a bit more human:

• Slow down

• Focused attention

• Embracing the Imperfect

• Experiencing the gift of finite-ness

Analog and alternative process can teach us to see with the heart.

These things were what I studied in seminary! And my undergraduate photography students were learning them through 120mm film.

For our photography students to remain competitive in their fields beyond the classroom, a robust digital curriculum is required. They must become experts in the latest tools and technologies. That is not in question.

However, what might it look like if we add to this excellent curriculum, the human forming super-powers of working with one’s hands in a historically relevant, imperfect process, that teaches us to see (and read images) in a whole new (much needed) way?

To that end I want to conclude with a quote from photographer Gordon Parks:

“I feel it is the heart, not the eye, that should determine the content of the photograph. What the eye sees is its own. What the heart can perceive is a very different matter.” — Gordon Parks

A few years back my husband and I were camping with friends at the Death Valley National Park in California. It’s as desolate as it sounds, but oddly magical. This was the trip from hell – broken tent, broken car, and fleeing from a sand storm were but a few of the things we encountered on this trip. In one of the lulls of chaos we decided to take a driving tour through the park and found, what we thought, was an easy trail.

It wasn’t until we were on the trail, being passed up by lifted 4x4 trucks who’s drivers were giving us odd looks that we realized … we were on a one-way in / one-way out off road vehicle trail … in a 1999 Toyota Sienna mini-van.

Bumping and scraping along the rocky NARROW path my husband was doing WORK getting this van through the toughest parts of the terrain. We had no choice to turn around. We had to push through. And we made it! Eventually … 4-hours later.

We later realized we missed the signs going into the trailhead that warned us of the vehicle requirements. But by the time we realized something was off we were already in the middle of it. There was no turning back. 

When I was beginning to prepare this presentation this story came to mind, I suspect for a few reasons:

• We didn’t understand what we were getting into when we started (neither did the early inventors of analog photography understand the eventual environmental impact of their inventions)

• We could have continued to ignore the reality of our situation, and potentially ended up in a much worse situation (like where analog photography en masse is currently heading)

• We instead chose to acknowledge our situation, how we got there, and charted a path out that was the best option given our vehicle: slow and steady with lots of stops along the way (which is what I’m going to propose for us today regarding photography’s future sustainability – we need to pivot)

But first: Who am I? And why am I here today sharing this with you?

I make good art work about hard things – it helps me understand the world around me. I’m an avid question asker, and long been deeply curious. 

• I’ve done some cool photo work that other people have liked

• Finished my MFA in 2020 (that year was the longest decade ever)

• I teach photo history – no, I didn’t draw the short straw (thanks for asking)

• I’m a Spiritual Director, which I mention because it frames everything else I do in my art and teaching. In learning how to become a spiritual director in seminary I learned how to have radical empathy and how to deeply listen really well, which inform my presentation today

My goal in this essay is not to share new facts about photography’s sustainability problems – I fully realize I’m preaching to the choir here today. I trust we are all here because deeply care about photography’s sustainability because we understand photography’s importance in the world … especially as AI comes online in a significant way.

I see my task here as using my powers of connection to string the facts we know together with what are often unspoken realities that have existed for over 100-years in photography. And, secondarily, to share creative ideas that may help lead us to a more sustainable future in photography for us all. 

So, let’s start by coming to a definition of what we mean, for this essay, when I say photography. 

One of the more common definitions I see goes back to photography’s linguistic meaning translated from Greek as “light writing.” This has long been an accepted as the best English translation, thus definition, for the term. However, one of the questions we’re working towards today in this talk is how helpful this definition is for photography’s future sustainability. I’m going to argue that’s it’s not. 

But before I get ahead of myself, let’s explore the short-est history of analog photography you’ve ever seen (promise)!

• Daguerreotype: single, positive image

• Silver Gelatin Dry Plate: single, reproducible negative

• Celluloid Film Roll: multiples quickly, highly reproducible

In summary: the technological advance moves from:

Single Non-Reproducible Image at Slow Speeds > Many Reproducible Images made Quickly 

Now, consider: How may have those technological advancements impacted how we understand photography today? 

When I asked myself this question, media theorist Marshall McLuhan came to mind: he says that the “content” of any medium blinds us to the character of the medium (the character of photography is its un-sustainability at mass reproducible scales). Interpreting this for our context it means that at scale we lose sight of the sustainability implications of our fascination with what our medium created took dominance over our understanding of what photography was

Kodak was a champion of this change and put photography into the hands of the masses while cloaking the means of production, both its labor and minerals. Kodak, and others, helped addict an image curious public to the act of photographing their daily lives at an unsustainable cost. And even though we were later promised sustainability would improve during the transition to digital, we must acknowledge that digital photography, and now AI, are no better in their sustainability. Digital technology simply displaced the problem rather than solving it.

So what are we to do about photography’s un-sustainability problem?

Let’s look at a different definition of photography from Angus in the book, Capitalism and the Camera:

“To place silver, rather than light, as central to photography’s ontology emphasizes the labor of the darkroom instead of  the mechanism of the camera.”  

- Siobhan Angus, “Mining the History of Photography,” Capitalism and the Camera

Angus is addressing the problem McLuhan surfaced around technology (that we are lulled to sleep by our collective fascination with what it does). Angus, by re-defining photography is bringing our attention back to the issues of sustainability at the forefront, and provides an antidote to McLuhan’s observation of what technology does to us. Our definition of photography must expand to include not only that it is visual communication through light, but that it is largely still accomplished through unsustainable materials and exploitative hidden labor practices. 

Thankfully, we are not left only to the hands of capitalistic and abusive mining and labor practices to make a photograph even today. 

• Sustainable alternatives from smaller organizations and businesses exist (yay!) 

• Older chemical mixes are being shared across the internet for home-based darkrooms

• We even have amazing organizations dedicated to teaching the public how to access, make, and use these more sustainable methods of analog photography. One of them, Sustainable Darkroom, is even a co-host at this very conference.

So we begin to see that the question is not if we can or should develop more sustainable methods, but, since they exist, why aren’t we using them (en mass)?

My ultimate theory is that even beyond the capitalistic drive for corporations to hoard earnings, the collective and larger “we” and our companies and universities alike, have not done the one fundamental thing required for any meaningful, lasting, and significant change: ACKNOWLEDGE THE REALITIES OF THE PAST and their impact on the FUTURE if we do not change.

Institutionally are we:

• Spending our budget funds as significantly as where we profess our hearts are in sustainability advocacy?

• Not advocating for changing darkroom chemical purchases and procedures in our academic institutions and organizations?

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Without acknowledging photography’s current un-sustainability, a sustainable path forward at large remains elusive. For photography to thrive in the future, it must confront this history collectively: practitioners, educators, administrators, and producers/manufacturers … just like we had to admit our mistake on the trail in Death Valley. Until we collectively – and speak loudly with our mouths and our money – acknowledge photography’s unsustainable past we will not create a more sustainable future.

Before we commit resources – even from mega corps and institutions that could afford it – we should need to sit with this question ourselves: Should we ditch analog photography and focus on making digital photography more sustainable? Or: IS ANALOG PHOTOGRAPHY WORTH SAVING? 

Due to the time allotted here, let me get to my answer quickly: YES.

• It gives us a slower lens on ourselves (the practice of delayed gratification)

• The materiality of analog photography teaches us the wisdom of our own finite limitations

• Analog photography can’t be forced: it can be coaxed and nurtured in the darkroom, but it will not bend to a photographers will with seeming unending flexibility digital offers

• And, because photography is true, but not always right, it is essential in the time of AI to teach us a more comprehensive visual literacy

Even more importantly, it affects students at a visceral level not possible through digital photography alone — no matter how comprehensive the curriculum may be.

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In the Spring of 2025 I taught a special topics photographic class on the theological and photographic theories to a group of undergraduate students in our digital exclusive undergraduate photo major program. Here’s a small taste of what some of the students had to say about the experience of getting hands on training with analog processes:

“There is something deeply personal and physical about film photography — it demands your presence, attention, and intentionality at every stage.”

“Working with … non-digital processes reminded me to slow down and be intentional. These forms require patience and care, which helped me see photography as more than just a technical skill — [it’s] a personal and emotional practice rooted in who I am.”

This last one perhaps summarizes much of what the other students shared in their final reflections from the course.

“I’ve come to understand that photography is as much about the journey as it is about the final image.”

This student feedback impassioned me further on the cause to help make analog photography more sustainable.

Here’s what we are currently doing at my academic institution to work towards that goal:

• Adding analog learning opportunities in the digital environment (special topics courses, upcoming workshops)

• Researching the impact of analog training in academic photo programing

• Running a small darkoom on campus that students can access & experiment in

• Using Eco-Pro system of chemicals to reduce environmental impact

• Emphasizing alternative analog processes

• Using opportunities like this conference to advocate in the future for institutional funding in support of more sustainable practices

• Teaching about the sustainability problems in these courses as a pathway for student comprehension of the issue at hand so they are prepared to be wise users of the photographic tool, rather than consumers alone

And we’re doing all of this not only to work towards improving photography’s sustainability overall, but to keep photography thriving at a deep level so that photographs that we make can truly change the world. Until we reach greater sustainability moving forward, they won’t fulfill that hope.

The only reason photographs haven’t changed the world yet is because WE DON’T KNOW HOW TO LOOK AT THEM
– Ariella Azoulay, The Civil Contract of Photography

And I would add, that not only do we not know how to look at photographs, we don’t know how to read them in the context of their current un-sustainability. We have so long ignored the fertilizer of photography being in unsustainable mining and exploitative labor practices that we cannot even see the fullness of what current photographs are waiting to tell us. To unlock photography’s culture shifting future, we need to be:

• Researching more sustainable alternatives at the academic level and publishing the results

• Promoting and sharing within our own spheres of influence the options and organizations that exist already who are doing the work

• Spending our personal and institutional dollars with those very same organizations and small companies 

• Continuing to create community led conversations like the one starting here today

We need analog photography to continue in a more sustainable way so that we can teach our students well the full and robust history of our medium – especially now that we now know that the salvation of sustainability once promised by digital photography was a red herring. And the only way either type of photography is getting a real sustainable future is through capital investment and academic/organizational buy in today. 

So let’s together advocate – like this conference is – for the institutional/organizational investment in chemical re-innovation, bolster the refurbishing market, and fund companies advancing sustainable solutions using the tools at our collective disposal.

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