The Subterranean Sublime: Whiteness, Masculinity, and the Making of a Visual Politics of Groundwater

This photoarticle interrogates the notion that groundwater is an inherently democratic resource by examining the historical development of the Ogallala Aquifer in the U.S. Southern Plains. While aquifers are celebrated for their capacity to help reclaim new territories, the persistent overextraction of the Ogallala reveals a wider inability to sustainably govern this resource. Through a close analysis of photographs documenting the first efforts to mine the Ogallala, this essay explores how visual representations of groundwater extraction helped construct a racialized and gendered subjectivity centered on white male ownership and stewardship. These images, produced as part of speculative property schemes, framed groundwater as a tool for transforming both the material and social landscape. By tracing how this ideology took root, this essay argues that groundwater’s seeming resistance to sustainable governance is not a product of its physical properties, but rather the outcome of historically constructed power relations and capitalist logics.