“Heed the Mute Language of Nature”: An Ecosemiotic Approach to Urban Wildlife Photography as Translation of Solastalgia1

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper attempts to conceptualise urban wildlife photography as so-called intersemiotic translation by reconceptualising the photographer as a translator who acts as “a mediator in an experiential process that allows the recipient (viewer, listener, reader or participant) to re-create the sense […] of the source artefact for him or herself” (Cultural Literacy in Europe, in [Bennett, K. 2019. “Editor’s Introduction. The New Iconicity: Challenges for Translation Theory and Practice.” Translation Matters 1 (2): 1–8], 3). By reframing the focus from an anthropocentric ethic to a biocentric ethic on the loss of place and belonging experienced by non-human animals in urban ecologies, in particular, this paper intends to explore the role of urban wildlife photography as translation of solastalgia in re-evaluating our current human values towards the natural world. Originally defined as “distress that is produced by environmental change impacting on people while they are directly connected to their home environment” [Albrecht, G., Sartore, G.-M., Connor, L., Higginbotham, N., Freeman, S., Kelly, B., Stain, H., Tonna, A. and Pollard, G. (2007) “Solastalgia: The Distress Caused by Environmental Change”, Australasian Psychiatry, 15(1_suppl), pp. S95–S98], solastalgia, it is argued in this paper, should be extended to include the experience of the non-human as well. Photography, it is argued here, is one way in which this experience can be critically depicted and translated to a human audience. By means of an interdisciplinary discussion between Translation Studies and Critical Theory (through Walter Benjamin and Bernard Stiegler), we attempt to provide an ecosemiotic exploration of the conceptual grounding of urban wildlife photography as intersemiotic translation.