Conclusion: All That Is Solid Melts into Air

The conclusion considers three different approaches to the fragility of ecosystems and the image: Louie Palu’s ephemeral photographs frozen in ice, which highlight the precarity of both image-making and life in the context of climate crisis, Alfredo Jaar’s critique of corporate attempts to preserve and own images, and a web of interconnection proposed by Warren Cariou that reminds us of our embeddedness within both extractive capitalism but also a broader web of life. Understanding the ecology of photography and its possibilities in the context of climate breakdown requires holding the complex material realities that underpin the image in tension with the ways of seeing it makes possible.