AcknowledgmentsIntroductionMonica Bravo and Carolin GörgenPart 1: Past Made PresentChapter 1: Rethinking the History of Western American PhotographyMartha A. SandweissChapter 2: Mirrors with a Memory: War, Memory, and the Western LandscapeBinh DanhChapter 3: (Dis)Placing Edward Weston: The Politics of Shutter ReleaseMonica BravoPart 2: Natural Resource ExtractionChapter 4: Missing the Forest for the Trees: Pulp, Pollution, and Landscape Photography in the Pacific NorthwestKatherine MintieChapter 5: Looking at Cows, Reanimating Gelatin: The Biopolitics of Photographic EmulsionAlan C. BraddockChapter 6: The Death of 7000 Songbirds: Photography’s Toxic AffinitiesAlice CazenaveChapter 7: The Nomadic AlchemistAndrés Pardo PicconePart 3: Native SovereigntyChapter 8: Corn Pollen Futures: Photography, Environmental Memory, and Indigenous Sovereignty on the Navajo NationWill Wilson (Diné)Chapter 9: Āina and Accession Photographs of Queen Kapi‘olani and Queen Lili‘uokalaniEmily CornishChapter 10: Bedrock Mortar vs. Photograph: Nevada City Rancheria Nisenan Cosmovision and the Malakoff Hydraulic MineJordan ReznickChapter 11: Everywhere is WestMercedes Dorame (Tongva), with an essay by Emilia MickeviciusPart 4: Against the Classical LandscapeChapter 12: “Mightier than the Pen?” Amateur Photography and the Circulation of Environmental Narratives in California, 1880s–1920sYves FigueiredoChapter 13: Black Gold: Petroleumscapes in Southern California Pictorialism and BeyondCarolin GörgenChapter 14: Documenting “Restless Earth”: John S. Shelton’s Photographs for Geology Illustrated (1966)Jennifer TuckerChapter 15: Arctic Time: Ecology and Photography in the Ice FieldsElizabeth HutchinsonAfterwordRobin E. KelseyNotes on ContributorsThe evolving ecological dimensions of photography in the American West and their ongoing impact.Photography and the American West have long been culturally intertwined. Since the 19th century, iconic photographs of western landscapes-think of Carleton Watkins's Yosemite views-have been read as inherently environmentalist. Challenging this assumption, Ecologies of Photography in the American West examines the medium's role in documenting, profiting from, and transforming ecosystems across its varied geographies. This book brings together a diverse range of scholars and artists to trace photography's roots in the earth and its entanglement with resource extraction and ecological rights. Timely and expansive in scope, the volume reframes the history of the region and foregrounds photography's complicity-as well as its potential-in shaping environmental understanding. It speaks to anyone attuned to the urgent environmental conversations defining the contemporary American West.With an afterword by Robin Kelsey.Photography and the American West have long been culturally intertwined. Since the 19th century, iconic photographs of western landscapes—think of Carleton Watkins’s Yosemite views—have been read as inherently environmentalist. Challenging this assumption, Ecologies of Photography in the American West examines the medium’s role in documenting, profiting from, and transforming ecosystems across its varied geographies. This book brings together a diverse range of scholars and artists to trace photography’s roots in the earth and its entanglement with resource extraction and ecological rights. Timely and expansive in scope, the volume reframes the history of the region and foregrounds photography’s complicity—as well as its potential—in shaping environmental understanding. It speaks to anyone attuned to the urgent environmental conversations defining the contemporary American West.With an afterword by Robin Kelsey.