What is Anthropocene?

Anthropocene is the current geological age, viewed as the period during which human activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment.

The word combines the root “anthropo”, meaning “human” with the root “-cene”, the standard suffix for “epoch” in geologic time.

The Anthropocene is distinguished as a new period either after or within the Holocene, the current epoch, which began approximately 10,000 years ago (about 8000 BC) with the end of the last glacial period.

Edward Burtynsky, a very well known photographer for his Anthropocene photography collection, stated that “These were the naturally occurring phenomena governing life’s ebb and flow. Now it is becoming clear that humankind, with its population explosion, industry, and technology, has in a very short period of time also become an agent of immense global change.”

What does Anthropocene mean to photography?

Edward Burtynsky introduced “The Anthropocene Project” which he presented as being a multidisciplinary body of work combining fine art photography, film, virtual reality, augmented reality, and scientific research to investigate human influence on the state, dynamic, and future of the Earth. 

These themes are presented in visual aspects so that a larger impact is brought across among the public as they’re physically seeing the problem. Writing as such makes it slightly harder to believe that these environmental problems are true, whilst imagery is a lot more powerful due to it displaying actual footage that these people have seen.

Many other photographers take the approach of not actually photographing real like images, but instead taking something damaging from the environment, and including it into the photography in a way that brings forth a harmful image to show what our world is becoming.