The type of lighting used in the image is artificial lighting from studio lights, coming from straight above the image. The light creates a contrast of colours and lights in the dark areas of the photograph. By using the colour tools in photoshop I changed the colours of the bags to create a more interesting response to her work. The visual elements of the image such as colour creates leading lines and for your eyes to flow around the image. The material of the bag makes the image feel like a jelly fish under the sea which represents the project of Rolsfen, she explored collecting single use plastic bags and re using them to create art work. The form is created by the positioning the bag in a certain way making it look like its 3D. The repetition of the creases and folds in the bag helps to create this 3D effect.
Why did I choose Abstract for my Anthropocene?
I chose to have an abstract response to this project as the images can have many meanings and interpreted in different ways. After doing research on abstract artists such as Mandy Barker I learnt more about the problems with single use plastic and how it effects the environment. This helped me to explore my ideas with plastic and experiment with different aspects of it.
How did I plan?
I started by exploring abstract artists and gathering ideas. I really like the idea of plastics, not just the composition of it but the meanings behind it. For example, how it is affecting our Earth every day and every minute. I decided to collected plastic bags, bottle lids and other single use plastic which are thrown out. I used the studio at school and also shoots at my home. After viewing my images I wanted to then develop them further by changing colours in photoshop and Lightroom.
Overall Evaluation
Overall, i am happy with how my final outcomes turned out. The three images work very well together as a trip ticks. I really like the colours of the images together how the purple flows through the images.
My image shows clear representation of her work. The texture created from the creases in the plastic bag, makes the image almost feel 3D. The shutter speed I used was a fast shutter speed so it could capture everything in the image. The purple and light pink in the image are bright and eye-catching, creating leading line around the image. Positioning the bag in a certain way so the photo will have depth and texture is similar to what Rolfsen has done. This effect feels as if you are inside a cave, or in the ocean.
Vilde Rolfsens aim for these set of images is to collect old single use bags and create are work from it by photographing it. I collected bags which I found on the beach and various other places to create the images.
In photoshop I experimented with using the circle Marquee tool, by cutting out circles of my original image and placing the circles onto a blank white background. This creates an illusion that the image is behind a window.
Experiment 2
In this experiment, I created a kaleidoscope. I did this by duplicating my layer and then flipping it horizontally and merging my layers, then duplicating and finally flipping it vertically. After merging my layers I repeated these steps many times to get my final result.
By editing the image in Lightroom classic and adjusting the original colour of the image, making it more interesting and like my artists reference. When editing I tried to keep the flow of plastic bag and no create sharp lines between the colours.
Using the colour balance on photoshop to create contrast in the colours in the plastic bag. This also highlights the areas of the image which have more depth and darker areas.
Before and after editing
Final Image
Image 2
Basic editing in Lightroom to change the brightens and contrast of my image. Lowering the brightness to reduce the harsh white light.
Editing the image in Lightroom first helps to develop it further in photoshop enhancing the colours or fixing any areas which need improving. New channel mixer picks up different highlighted colours and by adjusting this it creates contrast in the areas scrunched together.
Final Image
Image 3
In photoshop I flipped the image to be vertical, by doing this it will flow a lot nicer with my other images a trip tick.
It is a simple method that uses duplication, mirroring, and rotation to create a geometric pattern. A kaleidoscope pattern has a hypnotising quality to it. The pattern draws you into the centre of the image. This quality makes it great for background images, posters, or other designs.
I would like the have an abstract approach to this project, my images would be related to things that either effect or are damaging to the environment. For example, plastic bags collected from the sea, oil on the floors from cars, toys, bottle caps and other plastic.
Examples of abstract images I can respond too. The images above, all have an effect on the environment, for example the scaffolding creates a geometric image. The meaning of the image may be that the construction of new large buildings is contributing to damage of the environment.
Mandy Barker
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.
In my images I wanted to take ideas from Mandy’s work of plastic collected from the ocean and use plastic toys. Using small connecting toys bottles and other plastic items which cause pollution to the Earth. I will try to create an abstract response to anthropocene. The black background brings out the colours of the bottle lids, I will replicate this by using a black background.
Her images create the idea of space and that her objects are floating in space, but at the same time she is raising awareness about single use plastic.
Vilde Rolfsen
Norwegian photographer Vilde Rolfsen extracts beauty from discarded plastic bags while raising awareness about throw-away culture. Vilde Rolfsen is a fine art photographer based in Oslo. Her series “Plastic Bag Landscapes” addresses the detrimental effects of plastic waste to our land and our oceans. While highlighting the abstract beauty of discarded bags found on Oslo’s streets by exposing them from a macroscopic perspective, Rolfsen also hopes her work will remind viewers to look more closely at their own consumption patterns.
“When I started my degree at Kingston University back in 2011, I wasn’t really that worried with the environment, but my engagement with the issue grew over the years I spent in London. This might have something to do with the fact that I grew up in Norway, a fairy small country with little impact on the environment world wide. But as I lived in London I started noticing all the waste around on the ground and in parks, and I also noticed that most of it was used plastic bags. I wanted to do a project to draw attention towards this issue. I didn’t want to do something that was too in-your-face, because I think that puts people off. No one likes being told to do something. So I landed on creating a body of work where the images are aesthetically pleasing to look at, and the viewer can make up their own minds when they see what the image is. It was natural to me to take inspiration from mountains and glaciers, which I have grown up with in Norway.”
Steven Gallagher – plastic bag topology photography
Steven uses single use plastic bags to create topology’s, he uses a direct light from the back of the image. This light helps to bring out the colour in the bags. Re using the bags and turning them into art, helps to raise awareness for single use plastics in the world.
In my approach to Anthropocene I am going to try to recreate a similar response to Vilde Rolfsen and Steven Gallagher. By collecting single use plastic bags, in all different colours and using different light to create colour images of the single use bags. Creating these images relates to the idea of Anthropocene as single use plastic is now being band in parts of the world, as it it ruining our environment everyday. Taking these bags to make art work from them helps to reduce the amount of plastic being thrown into the bin and further polluting the Earth. I will use coloured lights in the studio or at home to create the bright colours. When plastic bags are coloured I will use a white light from behind to bring the colour of the bags through.
Naomi White – plastic bags.
Naomi White is an abolitionist feminist, artist, and educator, working on ideas at the intersection of political ecology and photography. Throughout her work White addresses an array of complex contemporary issues, questioning dominant ethics and narratives throughout history, and asking how we can shift our focus away from the current racist, capitalist model of domination to one of equity and collective voice, for the sake of all people, animals and the planet.
‘A current is a continuous, directed movement of water generated by the forces acting upon it, such as the gravitational pull of the sun and the moon. Interaction with other currents transforms a current’s direction and strength. In Plastic Currents, the every day plastic bag is transformed by light, turned from something familiar into something strange. Undulating and fluid these forms transition from non-biodegradable, reviled plastic bags into seemingly organic forms, imitating the very nature they threaten.’
From all of these artists I will create a response using all the different elements/ techniques that photographers have used. Each artist has similar reasons for the images and what doing there projects mean to them and the environments being helped by the projects.
The Anthropocene 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. As of April 2022, neither the international commission on stratigraphy nor the international union of geological sciences has officially approved the term as a recognised subdivision of geologic time, although the Anthropocene working group of the Sub commission on Quaternary Stratigraphy of the ICS voted in April 2016 to proceed towards a formal golden spike proposal to define the Anthropocene epoch in the geologic time scale and presented the recommendation to the international Geological congress in August 2016. In May 2019, the AWG voted in favour of submitting a formal proposal to the ICS by 2021, locating potential stratigraphic markers to the mid-twentieth century of the common era.
The Great Wave, the most dramatic of his seascapes, combines Le Gray’s technical mastery with expressive grandeur. He took the view on the Mediterranean coast near Montpellier. At the horizon, the clouds are cut off where they meet the sea. This indicates the join between two separate negatives. The combination of two negatives allowed Le Gray to achieve tonal balance between sea and sky on the final print. It gives a more truthful sense of how the eye, rather than the camera, perceives nature.
Constructed Landscapes II
This ongoing body of work consists of staged landscapes made of collaged and montaged colour negatives shot across different locations, merged and transformed through the act of slicing and splicing. The resulting photographs are a conflation, ‘real’ yet virtual and imaginary. This conflation aims to transform a specific place – initially loaded with personal meaning, memories and connotations – into a space of greater universality. In dialogue with the history of photography, ‘Constructed Landscapes’ references early Pictorialist processes of combination printing as well as Modernist experiments with film.
Image Comparison
Both could be described as landscape pictures. What kinds of landscapes do they describe?
Gustave Le Gray’s describes a coastal land scape with waves crashing on a dark gloomy day. Dafna Talmor describes a calm and quiet landscape from the dark warm colours coming from the ripped areas on the photograph.
What similarities do you notice about these two pictures?
A similarity that I notice is the sea is in both of the images, in Talmors image the sea is hidden within the rips and darkness of the photograph. The images are both also very dark and gloomy and ominous.
What differences do you notice?
The difference between these images is that Gustave’s photograph is a landscape and Dafna’s image is an abstract image. The landscape image has soft gentle lines whereas the abstract image has sharp hash edges.
What words/phrases best describe each of these landscapes?
Ominous, dark days, seas, sharp, cold
In which of these landscapes would you prefer to live?
Gustave Le Grays, as the photograph is more inviting
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.
