Experiments in Correlative Ontography: The Visualization of Environmental and Ontological Injustice

Abstract

Experiments in Correlative Ontography This essay discusses a photographic project that was undertaken as a response to a database that was developed to explore issues around environmental injustice in the city of Montreal. As a consequence a new photographic practice was developed, which I name ‘correlative ontography’. This practice endeavors to raise questions regarding the visual representation of injustice at both the environmental and ontological level. Through this practice I sought to explore the possibility of representing the ontological ‘being’ in a photographic image. Potential correlations between geospatially mapped data representing environmental conditions, demographics and health effects, and the photographic images that resulted from this experimental practice of correlative ontography were also examined.