The Way Out is Through

A Path to Sustainable Photography

The text here is a transcription of my presentation at the Sustainable Photography conference hosted by the Institute for Photography at Falmouth University.

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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?

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.

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.