Atomic Ecology

Abstract

Abstract Susanne Kriemann's Pechblende explores the material histories and visual (im)possibilities of uranium. Through a focus on the materiality of uranium, the article explores how the medium of photography is entangled with atomic histories by focusing on a series of exhibitions that explore the histories of photography, mining, and the damage slowly wrought by environmental change. While the violence of uranium exposure eludes vision, atomic light materially challenges the boundaries of the visible and the invisible, most tangibly shown in X-rays and autoradiographs, the camera-less exposures “taken” by uranium. Reading Kriemann's work through an eco-critical lens that centers environmental justice and labor, I explore the role of photography and the archive in the Anthropocene. Kriemann's counter-archival photographic practice draws attention to the socio-ecological costs of resource extraction while probing the limits of the visible. The materiality of the climate crisis necessitates thinking about materials—and the tangible consequences of their use—alongside questions of representation.