Natures of the Anthropocene: An Analysis of a Digital-Participatory Image Cluster
With the analysis of a contemporary digital photography collection we investigate which aesthetic perception patterns of nature and human-nature relationships become evident in contemporary images set in the context of the Anthropocene. In our presentation, we are taking an analytical look at the citizen-science-project “Changing Natures. Collecting the Anthropocene Together” of the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin and the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle Paris. The core of the project is a digital-participatory collection and exhibition of currently 350 photographs uploaded by users via the website.
In our research, we conceptualize this visual phenomenon as an ‘iconic image cluster’ (Müller 2020). Michael R. Müller characterizes such complexly organized visual artifacts by their distinctive feature of comprising far more visual material than could be grasped at a glance, while it is precisely the diversity and similarity of the images that establish the context for each single image. We examine the entire image cluster by using systematic image comparisons which aim to develop a typology of aesthetics of representations
The analysis shows that the (re-)presentation of nature takes up patterns of the ideal of romantic landscape painting and negotiates the traceability of human existence. In this regard the orientation towards cultural conventions of aesthetic representations of nature shapes and restricts the search for symbolic forms of expression for an unprecedented transformation of nature.