To explore photography’s chemical and material history, this talk examines the materiality and meaning of 19th-century iron and silver-based photographs that document and celebrate industrial growth in Pennsylvania, particularly railroads and steel mills. By placing these photographs, including platinum, cyanotype, and albumen prints, as well as stereographs in dialogue with each other, the ways that artists have documented transformations to the landscape in the past is reconsidered in terms of the rapid pace of current environmental degradation. Questions of how photography was used to respond to, and express social, emotional, or political perceptions of land, and how these meanings have changed in the 21st-century from an increasing awareness about the human impact affecting climate change will be explored.

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