From reality to simulacra

Abstract In an image-saturated era, our experience of the environment is increasingly mediated visually. Through the lens of eco-translation, this article explores how ecological realities are visually translated within the Tasvir Sal exhibition. Drawing on Jean Baudrillard’s four stages of simulacra, this study conducts a qualitative analysis of 100 environmentally themed photographs, categorizing each work according to its degree of detachment from material ecological referents and identifying four corresponding modes of visual translation: evidentiary, interpretive, symbolic, and simulative. The results illustrate a predominance of Stage 4 images — pure simulacra — indicating a curatorial preference for aesthetic and cultural self-referentiality over direct ecological documentation. Conversely, the relatively rare Stage 1 and Stage 2 works, while demonstrating some communicative value through their stronger ties to material reality, have their capacity for environmental witnessing constrained and are more vulnerable to being overshadowed by dominant symbolic or simulated representations. By tracing how the photographs move between reality and simulacra, the study underscores that the ethical challenge of visual eco-translation is not simply to avoid symbolism, but to use it without losing sight of the world it claims to represent.