Gateway Visuals : Strategies of Climate Photographers in the Digital Age

Visual climate change communication has seen increased scholarly attention in recent years, with a strong focus on science communication. However, less is known about the producers of climate imagery. The current paper presents results from interviews with 20 photographers engaged in climate change on the challenges they see for climate photography today and the key strategies they use to achieve reach and impact in the digital media environment. Results indicate that practitioners gravitate toward variations of a ‘gateway strategy’, where motives and forms of visual presentation are chosen as gateways to bypass the potential resistance or indifference to climate change messages. The paper proposes a typology of such visual gateway strategies.