Natural Visions | Photography and ecological knowledge 1895-1939

This thesis is about ecology as visual science, and the role of photography in establishing and promoting ecology in Britain, as a new kind of knowledge and as a new scientific discipline, between around 1895 and 1939. In the historiography of early ecological science, the roles of photography and visual knowledge have remained largely unnoticed. Yet, from its beginnings in 19th century European phytogeography, to the first modern ecological vegetation surveys undertaken by British ecologists around 1900, ecology developed as a visual science. From the late 1890s, early ecologists insisted on a role for photography in particular, as a means of scientific investigation and representation.