Bergit Arends – Photography, Ecology and Historical Change in the Anthropocene

#1 min Michal Šimůnek

8. 1. 2026

Bergit Arends. 2025. Photography, Ecology and Historical Change in the Anthropocene: Activating Archives. Photography, Place, Environment. New York London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group
Bergit Arends. 2025. Photography, Ecology and Historical Change in the Anthropocene: Activating Archives. Photography, Place, Environment. New York London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group
#49 Talk TogetherReviewArchive

Bergit Arends investigates how photography and the archive influence the perception of the environment in the Anthropocene by accentuating some voices and suppressing others. Based on case studies of selected art projects (e.g., C. Lebas's Field Studies project or M. Dion's My Jungle Table), she demonstrates how activating photographic archives creates a dialogue between past and present, shaping public discourse on environmental changes and humanity's relationship with nature. Through these projects, Arends illustrates how the photographic archive becomes a platform for critical reflection on the Anthropocene. Notably, she highlights their ability to decentralise environmental imagination: instead of grand planetary narratives like global climate change, they uncover impacts on specific places, communities, and daily life.

Text: Michal Šimůnek

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Michal Šimůnek

works at FAMU and the University of Economics in Prague. His research focuses on the history and theory of photography, visual culture and consumer culture. His teaching and research focuses on vernacular photography, operative images, technical apparatuses and consumer communities. He is currently involved in the project Operational Images and Visual Culture: Media Archaeological Investigations.

#49 Talk Together

This issue explores language – its forms, possibilities, and limits. We look at how we communicate in the digital space, how the language of artificial intelligence changes our notions of creativity, and how visual images can replace words. You will discover why language is never neutral and how it shapes identity, creates inequalities, and opens paths to liberation. The issue features a reflection by bell hooks, the artistic practice of Eszter Magyar, projects documenting the Roma community in Brno, and visual essays by Claudia Larcher and Tabor Robak. The magazine presents language as a tool of communication, power, and resistance and invites you to reflect on what it truly means to talk to one another today.

Daguerreotype Excursions into the Present

#15 min Michal Šimůnek

Daguerreotype Excursions into the Present

#46 TourismHistoryNarrative

Photography and the tourist set out almost simultaneously on a journey through history on the threshold of modernity. They walk together and transform each other through mutual interactions. I follow these changes from the perspective of the tourist gaze, asking myself where the tourist’s gaze is directed from and what it is directed at. I search for answers in the story of a single daguerreotype of the Niagara Falls, captured in 1840 by Hugh Lee Pattinson.