Art At Noon

Ecologies of Photography in the American West

 

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This is event is being held online. After registering, connection information will be emailed to you.

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Center for Art Education
arteducation@pafa.edu
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. The co-editors will address the book's relevance to the PAFA exhibition, the process of collaboration, and their hopes for the field.
 
This special program features a talk and conversation with art historians Monica Bravo and Carolin Görgen as they explore how photographs of the American West in the context of A Nation of Artists.
 
This program is virtual only—watch the live stream on YouTube. A link to the livestream will be emailed to all registrants by 11:30 AM on the day of the event. A recording of the program will be shared with registrants following the event.
 

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about monica bravo

A confident woman with glasses, in a dark blazer and white shirt, stands outdoors. The blurred background features greenery and soft lighting.
Monica Bravo is Assistant Professor of the History of Photography in the Department of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University. 
 
She is the author of Greater American Camera: Making Modernism in Mexico, published by Yale University Press in June 2021. It was shortlisted for the Charles Rufus Morey Book Award from the College Art Association. Her next book, “Silver Pacific: Early Western American Photography and its Mining Economy,” is under advance contract with Princeton University Press and has been supported by numerous fellowships. Publications related to this project have appeared in the journals American Art, Art Bulletin, Art History, and Photographica.

about Carolin Görgen

A person with short blonde hair and a white shirt stands in front of a plain, muted red background, looking slightly to the side of the camera.

Carolin Görgen is Associate Professor of American Studies at Sorbonne Université in Paris, France. 

A historian of photography and the American West, she is the author of The California Camera Club: Collective Visions in the Making of the American West (Oklahoma, 2025). Her research on photo networks across the American West has received support, among others, from the Terra Foundation for American Art, the Huntington Library, and the Amon Carter Museum. In France, she serves on the editorial board of the journal Photographica. In 2025, she was a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the University of California, Los Angeles.

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