ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the practice of environmental photography within contemporary art and its engagement of spectator empathy in order to highlight and critique unethical industrial practices. Photographers exploit the technology at their disposal to create images that situate and arrest the spectator and that, in some cases, can be argued to have a sublime effect. Popular interest in environmental photography has much to do with public concern about the effects of globalization and postindustrial change. Such images, Milbourne observes, "shape international discourses surrounding sustainable environmental practices". Having the ability to walk away from the artwork, the viewer can choose to be either engaged or disinterested based on their knowledge and understanding. It is thus the inheritance of art history in these works that produces the sublime, first for the photographer who reads the scene, and then for the viewer of the photograph, which is a communication of the photographer's experience.
