Photographs and other images often play marginal roles when history is written. What is involved in writing environmental history with photography as a main source? What can the medium of photography contribute to our understanding of industrial whaling’s first oil age, and maybe to our relationship to our present mineral age?
Espen Ytreberg will discuss these topics with reference to a project on vernacular photography from Norwegian industrial whaling, which has resulted in an English-language academic article (in the anthology Lifetimes, forthcoming from Punctum Books) and a Norwegian literary nonfiction book (Utryddelsen: Historien om den norske industrielle hvalfangsten).
The full title of Ytreberg's talk is "Interrogating the first oil age through photographs as the main empirical material: The case of vernacular photography from the era of industrial whaling".
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