Mandy Barker is a British photographer. She is mostly known for work with marine plastic debris. She has worked alongside scientists in hopes of bringing awareness to the mass amount of plastic that is floating around in our oceans. A lot of Mandy Barkers work has been manipulated and photo shopped to look as if these plastics are on going in the ocean. I will be focusing on her microscopic work below where she photographs small living marine organisms to be looking as such debris of plastics floating in the ocean.

-Analysis

This image above Mandy has used a microscope to photograph marine micro organisms that live throughout the ocean. This images are supposed to represent the plastic wastage in the oceans due to humans. As we can see this image in particular is similar to a plastic bag which floats through the depths of the water. Mandy jellyfish are mistaken for plastic bags in the oceans and i think this is where Mandy wanted to emphasis the effects of plastic. Enveloping black space evokes the deep oceans beneath. Presenting new ‘specimens’ created from recovered debris, serves as a metaphor to the use of plastic and the Anthropocene. Movements of the recovered plastic objects, recorded in camera over several seconds, represent the movement of individual plankton in the water. Current scientific research has found that plankton ingest micro plastic particles, mistaking them for food, and at the bottom of the food chain they are themselves a crucial source of food for many of the larger creatures. The potential impact on marine life and ultimately man itself is currently of vital concern. Mandy has made not only interesting images to look at when seeing plankton through a microscope, but a good story and image of what the effects of plastic is doing to the smallest of living creatures.