Black Gold: Photography, Extraction, and the Promise of the Petroleumscape

Episode von seeing by ear. Essener Gespräche zur Fotografie von Zentrum für Fotografie Essen · 19. Juni 2026 · 38 min

A Folkwang Photo Talk by Carolin Görgen, Associate Professor of American Studies at Sorbonne Université Paris (in English)

This talk examines the entanglements of photography and petroleum in early twentieth-century Southern California. As Los Angeles County became the center of U.S. oil production in the 1920s and 1930s, photographers such as Shigemi Uyeda and Florence Kemmler redirected their lenses from iconic Westernlandscapes toward the emergent »petroleumscape« of derricks, tanks, and trenches. Their images normalized the presence of oil in built environments and turned petroleum into a readily accessible resource, both physically and visually.

Situating »oil photography« within the fraught environmental histories of the American West, this talk integrates an expanded concept of extraction that encompasses the physical operations of drilling, the aesthetic practices that crystallized around petroleum, as well as their material repercussions.

How has photography contributed to presenting resource extraction as natural, aesthetically appealing, and virtually limitless? Listen to Carolin to discover how photography not only documented the oil industry, but also helped shape itsvisual culture and extractive imaginaries.

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