Plants & Symbiosis: Expanding Photography

From the very beginnings of photography, plants have been both a subject of study and a source of inspiration. Over time, the relationship between botany and photography has shifted – shaped by new visual technologies, ecological perspectives, and critical reflections on how science, colonialism and gender are intertwined. Today, artists are engaging with nature in renewed ways – with plants, fungi, soil, insects and other non-human life forms. 

The project was started in 2025 by artist and Senior Lecturer Nina Mangalanayagam and art historian, curator and Head of Research Louise Wolthers and includes seminars, workshops, papers and other presentations. The aim is to let plant and forest ecologies guide investigations into notions of hybridity, shifting photography away from classificatory precision and towards more reciprocal, situated modes of relation. Drawing on queer, decolonial, Indigenous, and environmental humanities we explore how photography can become a practice of vegetal co-existence – or, sympoiesis – rather than distant observation.

The project is inspired by a range of interdisciplinary artists, many of whom are invited to present their work during the project, and investigates methods that attune to vegetal perspectives and forest entanglements, foregrounding rhythms and agencies that exceed human dominance. It is inspired by embodied fieldwork and approaches that seek to register not only what forests, and other botanical environments, look like but also how they breathe, decompose, regenerate, and co-constitute more-than-human worlds.

Parts of the research address Swedish entangled contexts, where forest management, clear-cutting, and conservation intersect with multiple land relations, including but not limited to those in Sápmi. Forests here have long been shaped by overlapping regimes: extractive industries, scientific monitoring, tourism narratives, ecological research, and Indigenous stewardship. It also draws connections to other geographies—such as Caribbean environmental thought — where plantation histories and multispecies ecologies reveal how forests are intertwined with colonial and postcolonial worlds.

Previous events

Botanics and Symbiosis: Expanding Photography, Nov 5 2025

This symposium brought together artists, curators and researchers who in different ways explore the connections between botany and photography. 

The event was organized by Nina Mangalanayagam and Louise Wolthers and included Joy Gregory, Caroline Elgh, Hendrik Zeitler, Hanne Hammer Stien, Karin Wagner and Tom Pope.