The Anthropocene Epoch is an unofficial unit of geologic time, used to describe the most recent period in Earth’s history when human activity started to have a significant impact on the planet’s climate and ecosystems.
How and why are photographers exploring this concept?
Humans have become the single most influential species on the planet, causing significant global warming and other changes to land, environment, water, organisms and the atmosphere. Photographers can use their skills to capture this concept and publish/ display it for people to reflect on. I think its a very impactful genre of photography.
Examples of Anthropocene:
Global warming, habitat loss, changes in the chemical composition of the atmosphere, oceans and soil, and animal extinctions.
Moodboard:
I am aiming to photograph more landscapes and greenery. Land erosion, Deforestation and urbanisation.
Mandy Barker is a British photographer, who is mostly known for work with aquatic plastic debris – she has been working with marine plastics debris for over 13 years. Barker has worked alongside scientists in hopes of bringing awareness to the large amount of plastic that is floating around in the oceans.
Barker gathers or people send her different pollution related objects. She lays them out on a black background and later edits certain objects to be bigger if she wants it to be a focal point or smaller to fill up the image.
The Anthropocene is an era in which human activity is the dominant influence on both climate and environment.
Human existence, per Marazakis notes, is paradoxically both disease and cure for the earth: “If we assume that humans, and by extension, human civilization, is a product of nature”, he explains, “an external observer could describe it as an autoimmune disease attacking its own body.” Through our greed, we are destroying the earth, but it is such greed that could also save it. “The ecological movement does not aim at the salvation of the planet, but at the salvation of human existence on the planet.”
Mandy Barker
She is an international photographer whose work investigates marine plastic debris, she aims to raise awareness around plastic pollution in the world’s oceans and highlight current research studying the effects this has on marine life and ultimately ourselves.
One of her most famous images “Penalty”, that was made around the 2014 world cup, she got people worldwide to go out and find any footballs that may have been discarded or washed up on the beach. Using her simplistic style she created this image:
The Anthropocene defines Earth’s most recent geologic time period as being human-influenced based on overwhelming global evidence that atmospheric, geologic, hydrologic, biospheric and other earth system processes are now altered by humans.
The word combines the root “anthropo”, meaning “human” with the root “-cene”, the standard suffix for “epoch” in geologic time.
Period of time during which human activities have impacted the environment enough to constitute a distinct geological change.
The word combines the root “anthropo”, meaning “human” with the root “-cene”, the standard suffix for “epoch” in geologic time.
Anthropocene could be used to map out social landscape and collect evidence of spatial and social engagements. Photography is important in Anthropocene Photographs and photography act as vital ciphers and prisms for a wide range of anthropological concerns, and serve as increasingly complex forms of evidence, premised not on content alone.
Mandy Barker
Mandy Barker is an award winning photographer who focuses her work on marine plastic which gets washed up onto beaches all around the world, she has focusing on this for more than 13 years. Barkers aim is to show the powerful affect of marine life and plastic pollution, marine life and climate change.
She started her journey by taking photos of plastic how she found it on beaches but didn’t think she was getting a much of an emotional response or getting peoples attention, so she turned to making collage out of the materials she collected.
Mandy Barker created a series called Shelf Life which shows objects which was washed up of the UNESCO world heritage site of uninhabited Henderson Island, isolated in the middle of the South Pacific, and more than 5,000km from the nearest landmass, which showed the impact that we have, that us as humans aren’t just impacting the place we live but the whole world. The images in this series are inspired by the incredible coral reefs that surround Henderson, represented by the plastic objects that pass over them, and threaten their very existence. Each image is titled witha barcode – found on the objects recovered, to emphasise the LIFE of plastic that has travelled from SHELF to SHELF.
Burtynsky’s work on Anthropocene holds a neutral take on the situation of climate change and global warming. While it displays the absolute destruction of the natural world around us, the lighting and use of various tones leaves the viewer with a sense of indifference that leaves it to them to interpret how they receive the photograph.
Burtynsky often uses repetition with the patterns in his photographs, maintaining a similar texture that is only broken once or twice, typically by something else man-made, like vehicles, or a person. The angles he takes his photos from creates different shapes out of the landscape, but doesn’t follow anything uniform or geometrically.
TheAnthropocene is a period of time during which human activities have impacted the environment enough to constitute a distinct geological change. It is a proposed geological epoch dating from the commencement of significant human impact on Earth’s geology and ecosystems, including, but not limited to, anthropogenic climate change.
The Anthropocene defines Earth’s most recent geologic time period as being human-influenced, or anthropogenic, based on overwhelming global evidence that atmospheric, geologic, hydrologic, biospheric and other earth system processes are now altered by humans.
The word combines the root “anthropo”, meaning “human” with the root “-cene”, the standard suffix for “epoch” in geologic time.
The Anthropocene Project
The Anthropocene Project is a multidisciplinary body of work combining fine art photography, film, virtual reality, augmented reality, and scientific research to investigate human influence on the state, dynamic, and future of the Earth. The artists Edward Burtynsky, Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier took part in this project, their way of exploring the concept of The Anthropocene.
Embracing and developing innovative techniques, the trio embarked on an epic journey around the world (to every continent save Antarctica) to capture the most spectacular evidence of human influence, while taking time to reflect on the deeper meaning of what these profound transformations signify.
The project, which launched in September 2018, includes:
-a major travelling museum exhibition that premiered simultaneously on September 28, 2018 at the Art Gallery of Ontario and National Gallery of Canada before travelling to its first European venue, Manifattura di Arti, Sperimentazione e Tecnologia (MAST) in Bologna in Spring 2019;
-a new release of Edward Burtynsky photographs
-a feature documentary film
-immersive interactive experiences in augmented and virtual reality
-an art book published by Steidl
-a comprehensive educational program
Dandora Landfill #3, Plastics Recycling, Nairobi, Kenya 2016
Edward Burtynsky, Oil Bunkering #2, Niger Delta, Nigeria, 2016
A black-footed albatross chick with plastics in its stomach lies dead on Midway Atoll, thousands of kilometers from the nearest continent. Adult albatrosses collect food—and, inadvertently, pieces of plastic—from the ocean’s surface and feed both to their chicks
Mandy Barker is a British photographer. She is mostly known for work with marine plastic debris. Barker has worked alongside scientists in hopes of bringing awareness to the mass amount of plastic that is floating around in our oceans. Barker’s work has been published in over 50 different countries including; National Geographic Magazine, TIME Magazine, The Guardian, The Financial Times, Smithsonian, The New Scientist, The Explorer’s Journal, UNESCO, The British Journal of Photography, VOGUE, the World Wildlife Fund, and also to illustrate key academic and scientific research papers about current plastic research. Her work has been exhibited world-wide from MoMA Museum of Modern Art, and the United Nations headquarters in New York, the Victoria & Albert Museum London, and the Science & Technology Park Hong Kong. Barker was shortlisted for the Prix Pictet Award SPACE 2017, the world’s leading photography award for sustainability, and nominated for the Magnum Foundation Fund, LOBA Award, and the Deutsche Börse Foundation Photography Prize 2020. She is a recipient of the 2018 National Geographic Society Grant for Research and Exploration. Her first book ‘Beyond Drifting: Imperfectly Known Animals’ was selected as one of the Ten Best Photography Books of 2017, by Smithsonian, and ‘Altered Ocean’ was chosen by The Royal Photographic Society as one of the most coveted titles and top 10 Photobooks of 2019. Barker is a member of the Union of Concerned Photographers UCP, which is dedicated to using the power of imagery to underline the urgency of environmental concerns.
Examples of Her Work
Image Analysis
Mandy Soup
SOUP is a description given by scientists to plastic debris suspended in the sea, and with particular reference to the mass accumulation that exists in an area of The North Pacific Ocean known as the Garbage Patch.
Anthropocene is the idea that humans are moving into more of a world with domination, and competition, in a negative way. While in the process harming other innocent species, like fish and birds. It is an aim to spread awareness in a creative way, using art and photography and even science. This is a way of showing people the horrible things we unconsciously do daily, in a beautiful and touching way. It is more to say, “what now”. Not “look what we have done” as this shines it more in a negative blaming light, looking into the future not the past.
Who is Mandy Barker to Anthropocene?
Mandy Barker is an award winning photographer and you could say an influencer, who works photographing marine life plastics. She creates unique imagery using a smart method which creates an artistic yet appealing affect. For example:
This is where she requested people to find some footballs no one used, whether that be in the sea, abandoned on the beach or even in the streets. She does this to motivate people to take action in an artistic appeal.
She is very well known when it comes to bringing awareness towards this plastic pollution, even having her art work being shown in news papers like Time magazine or in areas like vogue, even working with science to spread the awareness and reduce plastics especially in marine life.
Some of her interesting work like this sheds some light on the effect of pollution even outside of the marine life. She creates animals that are affected by the problems of plastic using plastic, possibly using real life representations as a reference. She even goes into the dead animals like this bird shown, and shows the types of plastics that have been ingested by the bird and most likely killed it:
I like this idea of showing people the pollution of plastics, through remorse and sympathy because it creates a bigger impact on people spreading their awareness to more hidden things, that still occur. I also like her method of taking images of single object plastics, not any plastics but the ones found in animals that have died from the harm we unconsciously done. This gives me ideas on top of my idea, which will mainly be to take images of cigarette buds, found almost everywhere. And to take almost a gallery of cigarette’s and even the buds I find on the floor, and adjust them to my liking.
Mandy Barker is a British photographer. She is mostly known for work with marine plastic debris. Barker has worked alongside scientists in hopes of bringing awareness to the mass amount of plastic that is floating around in our oceans
What inspired Barker?
“nature inspires me a lot; like the things I find along the seashore, the way objects get washed up, the patterns in nature. They all influence shapes in my work.”
Mandy Barker states: “The aim of my work is to engage with and stimulate an emotional response in the viewer by combining a contradiction between initial aesthetic attraction along with the subsequent message of awareness. The research process is a vital part of my development as the images I make are based on scientific fact, essential to the integrity of my work. The impact of marine plastic is an area I have documented for more than 10 years and am committed to pursuing through visual interpretation, and in collaboration with science I hope it will ultimately lead to positive action in tackling this increasing environmental problem, which is currently of global concern”.
The photo above shows the debris of balloons after being popped in the air and left to float in the sea, polluting our oceans washing up on the shore and putting animals in danger as they think its food This is an effective image, due to the harsh contrast between the black background and the bright vibrant colors of the balloons. This creates the effect of of the plastic moving or even sinking. From the top of the image, the rubbish is larger and towards the center and bottom of the image, the rubbish is smaller. Creating the effect of the rubbish floating further away, Mandy Barker does this to emphasis the concern that rubbish pollutes all of our oceans for miles.
In this project Mandy posted on social media for people to collect footballs to create a collage and to project how impactful plastics are to the environment. in total 992 marine debris balls were recovered from the world’s oceans in just 4 months. 769 footballs and pieces of, with 223 other types of balls were collected from 41 different countries and islands and from 144 different beaches, by 89 members of the public.
