WARNING – THERE IS GRAPHIC IMAGERY

The life cycle is a viscous cycle unappreciated by most. The intense wait until our final days, that truthfully since birth has been inevitable. In my opinion, the life cycle aids our adaptation even though we are each just tiny specs within the universe we all make impacts one way or another, whether it be from passing on your knowledge to someone at work or just even making someone smile. Life and death is seen pointless to some: “born to die”- this is untrue we’re born because someone wanted to devote part of their life to us and to give us the best experiences possible.

For my photoshoot I decided to photograph roadkill willingly supplied by cats. I thought that this could represent how brutal life is and how anything could happen at any given moment.

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Edited

Abandoned walks

For mapping out a journey, some photographers use the simple technique of going on a walk and photographing everything as you see it. This is a type of documentary photography due to the individual wanting to capture a specific thing so that image remains outside of that second.
I also wanted to capture how people have disturbed this once loved environment and left it to overgrow and rot.

For my walk, I wanted to explore somewhere desolate and closed off from reality. I discovered a small piece of private land that I was permitted to explore. I was intrigued by this area due to there being a series of abandoned green houses and overgrown shrubs. This area was eerily quiet with plants and weeds scratching against the once standing greenhouses trying to get out. These slight noises gave an atmosphere of sadness to me because these green houses were once thriving with colour, now all that’s left is rotting and decay with the musky smell of damp.

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‘rot or decompose through the action of bacteria and fungi.’

Heikki Leis

 Heikki does mostly hyper realistic pen and pencil drawings and also sculpture. 
Since 2004 he is also an avid photographer and takes part in exhibitions. 
His biggest passion is analogue photography, he uses both mid- and large format cameras.
The project that took the longest time, the most effort and has also become the most famous is his series of molds called “Afterlife”. A book by the same name, consisting of photographs from the series was also published in 2017. 

Afterlife

‘ Molds belong to the kingdom Fungi. They’re kin to more friendly fungi like the yeast that leavens your pizza dough, and the mushrooms atop your pizza. This great kingdom of life spans the gap between microorganisms and macroorganisms (like us). In fact molds and other fungi are the closest relatives of animals; of people. We have a lot in common, including our love of pizza.  
 The earth already has all the carbon atoms it will ever have; they are the very stuff of life. Plants use their superpower, photosynthesis, to extract carbon from thin air using sunlight. They fashion that carbon into new molecules, like carbohydrates and proteins, that are the building blocks of the beets, the potatoes, the turnip, you and I, and all life. In the end, the special task of molds is to dismantle what once lived, and exhale that carbon back into the air again. To recycle life.
Recyclers don’t get much glory, but clearly there’s an underappreciated beauty here. Because of recyclers like molds, there is life after life.’