The pencil of cheap nature: Towards an environmental history of photography.

This article develops a preliminary environmental history of photography framed within the concept of the Capitalocene—the geological epoch defined by capitalist resource extraction—rather than a history of environmental photography. It argues that photography is part of a longer history of the "cheap image," a visual manifestation of capitalism's dualistic separation of capital and nature, relying on extensive exploitation of labor, materials, and energy while obscuring these relations. The article discusses the 2022 exhibition *Mining Photography: The Ecological Footprint of Image Production* (Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg), which traces photography's material dependencies on mining and fossil fuels, and highlights contemporary artists whose work exemplifies "metabolic realism," an approach that situates photographic images within their ecological and socio-economic production processes. This perspective challenges conventional representations of climate change by emphasizing the intertwined histories of capitalism, environmental degradation, and photographic production.