Landscapes of Despair: Book Covers and the Visual Culture of the Opioid Crisis

Abstract

Why does every book about the opioid epidemic have a landscape photograph on the cover? Landscape photography has had a persistent role in media coverage of America’s opioid epidemic since at least 2016. This paper explores the phenomenon through analyses of a selection of recent, popular press book covers whose texts address the crisis, asking what this marketing strategy reveals. What do these images tell us about how we approach the opioid crisis, and how that approach may differ from previous addiction epidemics in America? How does the perceived whiteness of this epidemic influence how we visualize it? My argument is that, for the educated, urban reader whom these books are marketed to, the images are intended to evoke our existing anxieties about those other crises – climate change and American economic decline – provoking empathy with the victims of the opioid crisis. This signal to empathy may point to not only a changing approach to addiction but a shift in American culture’s attitude towards the future.