Photography and Ecology
Instructor: Yogan Müller | Tuition: $400 (Members) $470 (Non-Members)
Dates: Mondays, April 13 - May 18 | Time: 6:00 - 8:00 PM ET | Class Size Max: 8
Course Overview
In today's changing climate, photography remains a vital act of care and attention–a lens through which we can create restorative narratives that speak to our shared future.
This 6-week online class invites students to begin or refine ongoing bodies of work that position image-making as a form of ecological stewardship.
Drawing from queer ecology, interspecies friendship, and sustainable practices, we will examine the ethical and environmental implications of image-making and make work that reflects empathetic kinship with the living world.
Through lectures, group discussions, and readings, students will be encouraged to deepen their commitment to building a long-term photographic practice rooted in environmental awareness.
Image 1 © Yogan Müller, Layout, Tracy Hills, CA, 2023.
Image 2 © Yogan Müller, Archive, Los Angeles, CA, 2024.
Image 3 © Yogan Müller, Corral Fire (Burned Vegetation), Tracy Hills, CA, 2023.
Image 4 © Yogan Müller, Earth (Owens River Gorge), Bishop, CA, 2024.
Image 5 © Yogan Müller, Krysuvíkurvegur, Iceland, 2015.
If your desired tuition option is unavailable, please email info@penumbrafoundation.org and we will do our best to accommodate you. If the entire class is sold out, we can add you to the waitlist.
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Yogan Müller is a French, Los Angeles-based photographer, first-generation graduate, researcher, and educator.
His work engages with ecological overshoot and its impact on landscapes and communities. He recently launched Tracy Hills with Radius Books, the culmination of four years of fieldwork photographing the construction of a new town of more than 5,000 homes near San Francisco.
Between 2022 and 2025, he developed JPM, a manifold project and posthumous collaboration with his late Algerian father. He conceived, designed, and produced a photobook dummy during the 2024 Penumbra Foundation Long-Term Program Photobooks, which was shortlisted at the 2025 LUMA Rencontres Dummy Book Award.
In 2019, he joined the UCLA Design Media Arts (DMA) Department as a Researcher and taught at DMA between 2020 and 2024. He graduated with a practice-based PhD in photography at ENSAV La Cambre and Université libre de Bruxelles in 2018.
He is part of the UCLA Design Media Arts Counterforce Lab.