"Cobalt" photographs

Cobalt

Photographic Series | 2016

Cobalt is a photographic series that investigates the material and geopolitical dimensions of cobalt, a rare and strategic mineral embedded in military infrastructure, rechargeable batteries, and image-making technologies. The series stems from Mattingly’s research into the material supply chains of photography—where raw minerals like cobalt support a medium often associated with witnessing, documentation, and resistance.

Through stark, large-format prints of mining landscapes, transport infrastructure, industrial diagrams, and abstract pigment studies, Cobalt links mineral extraction to global systems of power and environmental degradation. The work prompts viewers to consider the violence that underlies ubiquitous technologies and asks: What does it mean to make art with materials whose origins are obscured by distance, displacement, and harm?

Project Details

• Years: 2016
• Medium: Chromogenic dye coupler prints on archival paper
• Print Size: 30 x 30"
• Locations Depicted: Michigan’s Eagle Mine, industrial processing centers
• Exhibited at: KUNST HAUS WIEN (Mining Photography, 2023), among others

“This series began with the cobalt inside my camera. It’s also in pigments, batteries, tools of war, and everyday consumer goods. Cobalt is considered a strategic mineral in the U.S., essential to national defense but often sourced from areas of intense geopolitical instability. I wanted to understand what connects photography, which I use to document and tell stories, to the systems that also perpetuate harm. Cobalt is about those entanglements: material, ethical, and historical.” - Mattingly

Description

The photographs in Cobalt span documentary and abstract modes, capturing the landscapes, infrastructure, and logistical networks behind one of the most vital—and contested—materials in contemporary technology. From scenes of Michigan’s Eagle Mine to maps of transnational supply chains, Mary Mattingly uses photography to expose cobalt’s role in everything from military drones and rechargeable batteries to photographic pigments themselves. Long valued for its rich blue hues in art history, cobalt is also a “strategic mineral” classified by the U.S. Department of Defense—its extraction tightly bound to issues of surveillance, defense, and global inequality. The series draws attention to the human and environmental toll of cobalt mining, particularly in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where over 60% of the world’s supply originates, often under exploitative labor conditions. By layering stark visual language with deep material research, Cobalt makes visible the unseen costs embedded in artistic and technological production, and challenges viewers to consider how beauty, violence, and infrastructure are entangled in the image.

Selected Works