Mandy Barker is a British photographer whose marine plastic debris work has received global recognition. She has worked with scientists and aims to raise awareness about plastic pollution in the oceans, showing the harmful affect on marine life, climate change and even humans – influencing the viewers to take action and make change.

She grew up collecting shells and driftwood on the beach and now she collects plastic. Working alongside scientists and researchers, she transforms data on ocean plastics into collages of pollution. By pairing aesthetically pleasing images with the ugly facts they represent, Barker hopes to encourage public outcry and change.

“Cleanups are brilliant to remove the plastic that’s there,” she says, “but we shouldn’t be needing to clean up. We should be stopping it from actually entering the ocean. That’s the most important thing.”

Her work interests me as I like the way she combats the plastic waste issue in an artistic way to make it appeal to a wider audience helping her share the message.

Her SOUP series is made from “plastic soup”—the debris floating in water, which constitutes 30% of the total plastic pollution that enters our oceans. (The other 70% sinks.)

This image is powerful as the black background contrasts the vibrant, garish colours of the plastic displaying the sheer amount of waste she collected. It is formatted in a way that, without further inspection, could be seen as just an artistic image however when you take a closer look it is revealed that it is in fact a demonstration of the issue of single use plastic and its effects on our environment. This therefore relates to the Anthropocene topic as she is combatting this issue and aiming to educate on the negative effects this man-made waste is having on our planet and ecosystems. The use of smaller pieces as well as larger ones gives the affect of distance representing the quantity and scale of this issue also almost giving the look of space and shows the correlation to the size of the universe with the scale of the issue.

WHO IS STEPHANIE JUNG?

Stephanie Jung, based in Germany, is based known for her experimental work using multiple exposures of cities and crowded areas. She learnt the crafts of photography through her father. She loves warm colours (often around dusk time) and busy streets filled with pedestrians, vehicles, and tall buildings. After taking pictures from all different angles and exposures, she layers them all on top of each other so that you can vividly see all them all.

WHY HAVE A CHOSEN THIS PHOTOGRAPHER?

I have chosen Stephanie Jung because I really like the way it shows the busyness of a city while it still being different, exciting and not just a boring picture that you could see anywhere. This links to Anthropocene as I think its a great way of showing overpopulation (busy, lots of people, etc.) and pollution (loads of cars, etc.).

HOW I WILL RESPOND?

I plan to walk around town (St. Helier) and other busy places, especially around 4-5pm when lots of people finish work so there will be more going on and to photograph. I will mainly look for large crowds and tall buildings as these are elements that are focus points in Stephanie Jung’s work that I really love the effect of. I also the love the use of colour in the photos and how they can have such a big impact on the whole appearance of the photo, and because it is currently winter the sun will be setting when I plan on taking photos which I think will bring the pictures to life and make them that bit more special.

SOME EXAMPLES OF HER WORK

ANALYSIS

who is Frank Hallam Day?

Frank Hallam Day was born in 1948, living and working in Washington DC, USA. He has been active as a fine art photographer for many years. He has taught photography at Photoworks, at the Washington Center for Photography, and at the Smithsonian Institution. His work has been shown in many international exhibitions and is found in numerous museums and private collections. His work is in numerous museums and private collections in the United States and abroad, including the State Museum of Berlin, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Portland Art Museum, the San Diego Museum of Photographic Arts and the Corcoran Gallery of Art.

what does he do?

Frank Hallam Day’s work focuses on people and nature, and the dysfunctional relationship between the two. Frank Hallam Day depicts the phenomenon of man and his environment in a unique manner, and makes RVs ultra-modern, high-tech and luxury homes on wheels the brightly lit and dazzling stars of his pictures. They seem to be inextricably entwined in the jungle landscapes of Florida at night, and appear as essential islands of security in a dark and hostile environment. They protect their owners with a feeling of safety and comfort in the lap of luxury. Of course, this no longer has much to do with the love of nature, relinquishing everyday luxuries or winding down.

Frank Hallam Day’s work is concerned with culture and social history, as in his series on the impact of globalization on African culture, and on the erasure of cultural, political and personal memory in the rebuilding of East Berlin in the 1990‘s. His work has also been concerned with the fraught relationship between man and nature, as in the Florida series and earlier work on the manmade landscape along the eastern seaboard of the U.S. His multi-year work on Bangkok at night dealt with obsolescence, the passing of time, and the transient nature of progress as well as life itself.

how will this inspire me and where will I go

The photos I’m going to take will be of buildings, boats, cars or anything that’s rusting, rotting, breaking or has graffiti on it as this is the theme that Frank Hallam Day was looking into. I will be going to run down places and the harbour as these places will have stuff decaying and rusting. I will be using these two photos as inspiration and what I will be trying to aim for.

I wanted more time to take these images as well as more light but unfortunately it is very difficult to do this as it gets dark so soon. Therefore a lot of these images are limited in terms of light and resolution. I hope to take more as this was a very rushed process and I need to photograph a few more locations. Here I managed to go to Val de la Mare reservoir dam as well as some fields nearby it but unfortunately these are not exactly the fields that I wanted to photograph, so I will still need to do that.

The unedited images that I think are the strongest and that I may end up using are below.

Using Photoshop, I edited the three images below that I already had and believe fit the Anthropocene brief.

Firstly, I took each image’s dimensions and then created a canvas that had double these dimensions.

I then added the image onto the new canvas using Ctrl-A, Ctrl-C, and then Ctrl-V onto the canvas. Then Ctrl-T to move the image to the top right corner. I then pasted the image again so there were two copies and placed the second one under the first as shown below. I then right-clicked the image and pressed ‘Flip Vertical’ to reverse the image upside down. I then repeated this process but with the difference of flipping horizontally instead and placing the new image next to the first one.

To add the final image and complete the edit, I had to paste it in again and then place it in the final quarter, before flipping it both horizontally and vertically. The final product is below.

This process can be repeated with different choices of placement which can create lots of alternative images. Here are my final images.

In this photoshoot I took pictures in the style of Rosenthal. I used the black cardboard to place my objects on, this was to illuminate the colours of the plastics. I took pictures of empty plastics around my house, but also plastics that I personally use of a daily basis.

In this photoshoot I took images of plastics I collected over the weekend. In addition I toom images of plastic objects I use on a daily basis to show how much we rely on plastics.

I will also take another photoshoot to show more plastic objects so I can have more of a variety of images. I will pick out some plastic objects around my house.

FLAGGING MY IMAGES:

The images colour-coded in green I believe are my strongest images in my photoshoot. I think these will be the ones I use for my final outcome. This is because they are focused and have a high resolution. The image colour-coded in red I will not be using as it isn’t focused and it not the best it could be.

Gustave le Gray was born in 1820 in Val-d’Oise France and was a central figure in French photography know for his technical innovations in photography such as his improvement on paper negatives and the wet collodion method to create a print on a glass plate. his image “The Great Wave” is an example of ‘constructed seascape’ it has the sea taken from one photo and the sky from another melded together.

Dafna Talmor created seascapes by collaging and montaging colour negatives.

Both could be described as a landscape. What landscapes do they describe?

Gustave le Gray creates realistic landscapes that look as if they go together creating a sense of grandeur and have a more romantic approach. Whilst Dafna Talmor’s focuses more on the shape of the rift created to stick them back together, with plain and desolate landscapes in the background. Both photographers feature the sea in their work creating seascapes from multiple images.

What differences do you notice?

Dafna Talmor created defined lines where it is apparent that the photo has been altered leaving negative space between images to create abstract shapes and patterns where as Gustave le Gray used what he called Combination printing using one image of the sea and another of the sky and blending them seamlessly into one another. Gustave also took more classic landscape images whilst Talmor takes closer abstract images creating desolate looking landscapes.

What similarities do you notice?

Both photographers create new landscapes by splicing negatives together. The sea is a prominent feature in both photographers work.