For an Ecology of Images

A new, ecological approach to images by a renowned philosopher.

When Susan Sontag first proposed the idea of an “ecology of images,” she meant it as an exhortation to be vigilant against the vast surplus of pictures threatening our ability to truly see. Today, beyond the deep anxieties over a diminishing attention economy, concern focuses on the environmental cost of storing and circulating the digital images that confront us with unprecedented speed.

Against the disposable rapidity demanded by digital media, Peter Szendy emphasizes the labor and time required for images to develop and come into view. This inquisitive essay takes us from mimicry in the animal kingdom to the history of the shadow, Pliny’s story about the birth of painting to Nabokov’s butterflies, the first use of slo-mo in film to the first aerial photograph.

Peter Szendy is David Herlihy Professor of Humanities and Comparative Literature at Brown University. His many books include The Supermarket of the Visible; Hits: Philosophy in the Jukebox; Kant in the Land of the Extraterrestrials; and All Ears: The Aesthetics of Espionage.