Mining Photography
The Ecological Footprint of Image Production

Exhibition from 13 February to 8 June 2025

Is Photography Polluting? The Mining Photography exhibition is dedicated to the material history of the main resources used to produce images, addressing the social and political context of their extraction and waste, as well as their relationship to climate change. Since its invention, photography depends on the worldwide extraction and exploitation of so-called natural resources, whether it be bitumen, carbon, copper, or silver in the 19th century, of which the photographic industry was one of the largest consumers by the end of the 20th century. Today, with digital photography, image production depends on rare earths and metals such as coltan, cobalt, and europium. Through historical photographs, contemporary artistic proposals, and interviews with specialists, the exhibition narrates the story of photography as an industrial production, illustrating how deeply this medium has been linked to human-driven environmental change.

The exhibition will be presented for the first and only time in the French-speaking world, in a version specially adapted for the spaces of the Swiss Camera Museum.

An exhibition from the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg.