Contemporary images confronts our altering planet – KC STUDIO

Pablo López Luz, Vista Aérea de la Ciudad de México, XIII (Aerial View of Mexico City, XIII) from the collection Terrazo, 2006. Pigment print, 39 1/3 x 39 1/3 inches (99.9 x 99.9 cm). (courtesy of the artist and Arróniz Gallery, Mexico City. © Pablo López Luz.)

On view via September 13, 2026, at Kemper Museum of Art

The Anthropocene epitomizes what thinker Timothy Morton has known as a “hyperobject,” an occasion or prevalence that exceeds typical quantification and defies conventional definitions and understandings of what a factor is. While the time period has mostly been utilized to the modifications in world local weather—adversarial modifications which were underway for a while and are unquestionably accelerating—it can be understood as a crucial lens via which we predict extra broadly about practically each facet of human life and its penalties on this planet.

Second Nature: Photography within the Age of the Anthropocene is the primary exhibition to look at the Anthropocene thesis via the lens of up to date images, and we start with the assertion that it’s not one singular narrative, however a various and sophisticated net of relationships between and amongst humanity, trade, and ecology, the depths and results of that are regularly being found.

The exhibition and catalogue look at these relationships via the work of forty-three worldwide, photo-based artists who’ve engaged with points of this phenomenon over the past twenty years. We suggest that there is no such thing as a singular inventive understanding or document of the Anthropocene; the variety of inventive views corresponds appropriately to the variety of views within the scientific group. Instead, the artists included right here have pushed technological boundaries and developed conceptual approaches to picture making that represent a dramatic rupture within the traditions of the medium. They have created myriad approaches to representing the land, collectively charting a various inventive reckoning with what it means to reside on Earth within the age of the Anthropocene.

Our exhibition begins within the early 2000s, corresponding with the emergence of the time period “Anthropocene” in scientific and environmental circles when atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen and biologist Eugene Stoermer proposed it to indicate a brand new geological epoch. Since that point, the Anthropocene thesis has been uncovered to a wider public viewers via increasing scientific research and scholarship, rising protection within the in style press, widespread and fervent activism, and quite a lot of inventive responses. The time period has since entered into the frequent lexicon and has been adopted by disciplines outdoors the sciences, together with philosophy, economics, sociology, geography, anthropology, and others, successfully linking it to almost each facet of postindustrial life.

Excerpt of an essay by exhibition co-curators Jessica May and Marshall N. Price from the exhibition catalogue. Excerpted by permission, courtesy Rizzoli Electa.

The exhibition Second Nature: Photography within the Age of the Anthropocene is on view at Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art via September 13, 2026.