Revolutions: Material Forms, Mobile Futures
Monday Night Lecture Series | Fall 2019

Collecting the Future: Photography, Waste and the Industrial Revolution

Jennifer Tucker • Wesleyan University

November 11 @ 6 P.M.
Daniel Family Commons, Usdan University Center

Collecting the Future considers how photography emerged in the late nineteenth-century as both a new mode of documenting the chemical revolution and a technological process that was itself the product of processes that produced chemical waste. Tracing the routes through which photography entered the language of Victorian industry, labor movements, and environmental law, this talk offers new evidence of the historical uses of photography in visualizing river and air pollution in the industrial alkali landscapes of northern Britain. Exploring the politics of visual production in the Second Industrial Age suggests the need for new interdisciplinary approaches to visual history and offers historical perspectives on current uses of visually mediated narratives, evidence and documents in environmental law and science policy.

All lectures begin at 6 p.m. and are held in the Daniel Family Commons (located in the Usdan University Center) unless otherwise noted.

Revolutions: Material Forms, Mobile Futures
View Fall 2019 Lecture List