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This article examines the interplay of word and image in environmental communication through the lens of Swedish nature photography, focusing on the exhibition Vinnare och förlorare i svensk natur (Winners and Losers in Swedish Nature) by the Swedish Association for Nature Photographers. The study contrasts this contemporary exhibition with Arne Schmitz’s 1977 photographic essay Landskap i förvandling (Landscapes in Transformation), highlighting divergent strategies in combining visual and textual elements to convey environmental messages. Drawing on W. J. T. Mitchell’s theories of image-text relations, the article critiques the exhibition’s reliance on aesthetically captivating close-ups of individual animals, which, while emotionally engaging, risk undermining the intended message about biodiversity and ecological interdependence. The accompanying texts, though informative, are often relegated to a secondary role, creating a dissonance between visual and verbal narratives. In contrast, Schmitz’s work exemplifies a more integrated and pedagogically effective approach, where images and texts mutually reinforce a critical environmental perspective. The article argues for a reconsideration of the conventional division of labor between image and word in environmental media, advocating for more cohesive strategies that align aesthetic appeal with ecological urgency.

The French anthology Nouvelle Histoire de la Photographie, published in 1994 under the editorship of Michel Frizot and translated into English in 1998, has been recognized as presenting a new way of writing the history of photography. Its precursors were surveys of the development of photography as an art, imbued by a modernist aesthetics of media specificity. Conversely, Nouvelle Histoire de la Photographie is generally acknowledged as having illuminated more aspects of the multifaceted medium of photography, used for many ends other than art. While this article recognizes the book's departure from the model once provided by the histories of art, it claims that it has not similarly departed from the modernist evolutionary tendencies of its earlier precursors. In renouncing the influences from the history of art, it has in fact made these even stronger, turning the book into a celebration of the medium in itself.