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.

What Is Anthropocene?

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.

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.

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:

Plastic and waste

Plastic pollution is a global problem. Approximately 7 billion of the 9.2 billion tonnes of plastic produced from 1950-2017 became plastic waste, ending up in landfills or dumped. Poor waste management contributes to climate change and air pollution, and directly affects many ecosystems and species. Landfills, considered the last resort in the waste hierarchy, release methane, a very powerful greenhouse gas linked to climate change.

Habitat Loss

Habitat loss occurs when natural habitats are converted to human uses such as cropland, urban areas, and infrastructure developmentHabitat loss has significant, consistently negative effects on biodiversity. Habitat loss negatively influences biodiversity directly through its impact on species abundance, genetic diversity, species richness, species distribution, and also indirectly.

Ocean Pollution

Every minute, the equivalent of one garbage truck of plastic is dumped into our ocean. 

Some of the debris ends up on our beaches, washed in with the waves and tides. Some debris sinks, some is eaten by marine animals that mistake it for food, and some accumulates in ocean gyres.

Climate Change

Warmer temperatures over time are changing weather patterns and disrupting the usual balance of nature. This poses many risks to human beings and all other forms of life on Earth. Changing climatic conditions and dramatic increases in carbon dioxide will put our ecosystems to the test, threatening supplies of fresh water, clean air, fuel and energy resources, food, medicine and other matters we depend upon not just for our lifestyles but for our survival.

Air Pollution

Air pollution refers to the release of pollutants into the air—pollutants which are detrimental to human health and the planet as a whole. 

Most air pollution comes from energy use and production, burning fossil fuels releases gases and chemicals into the air.

Oil Pollution

-One quart of motor oil can pollute 250,000 gallons of water, and one gallon of gasoline can pollute 750,000 gallons of water! Oil that leaks from our cars onto roads and driveways is washed into storm drains, and then usually flows directly into a lake or stream.

-Depending on the circumstances, oil spills can be very harmful to marine birds, sea turtles and mammals, and also can harm fish and shellfish. Oil destroys the insulating ability of fur-bearing mammals, such as sea otters, and the water-repelling abilities of a bird’s feathers, exposing them to the harsh elements.

The Anthropocene Epoch is an unofficial unit of geologic time.

Anthropocene refers to a period of time during which human activities have impacted the environment enough to create a distinct geological change. These changes include;

My mood board shows things like buildings, cars, or other man made objects and how they have impacted earth in perhaps a negative way. As my photoshoots will take place in Jersey, I think taking pictures of buildings in town, or even just cars in crowded car parks will fit the theme of Anthropocene.

Mind-map

Subjects I’m Looking For

Areas like: Cars, The Mine at St.Johns, pollution like plastics and garbage, scattered round jersey, or clumped in specific areas.

I’ll attempt to aim for creating an artistic angle when taking images of plastics.

One idea that is common within everyone’s life, is smoking especially cigarettes, which you will find almost everywhere.

Another Idea could be going to even streets or certain areas where rubbish is just thrown everywhere aimlessly, not in large quantities, but lots of images of rubbish thrown everywhere.

I could use the idea of typology and take lots of individual images of the buds or the cigarettes anyways.

Robert Clayton

Robert Clayton is known for his work in urban photography, particularly in neighbourhoods and estates.

Intentional or not, it appears that he wants to show the dullness and depressing neighbourhoods, full or lacking in crowdedness. Some of these feel as if they were taken in a deserted and abandoned area which gives quite a chilling feeling. Here are some of his photos:

Analysis

You can see here, a wide view angled landscape photo showing some apartment buildings standing tall along with other buildings in the fore and background in a very flat grass area, the buildings indicate human life, but the environment and natural life is scarse, this could be indicating that the way humans live is not supposed to be mixed in with the way animals live.

Another thing is some of the buildings obstructing the sun, casting a long shadow across the flat land. This may be representing the intrusion of man made structures being built in our world, we’re not supposed to live the way we do and we definitely shouldn’t be shunning nature out as we do so.

I can go to places like La Collette, Le Marias, Samarès, Le Quennevais Le Squez and Grouville Arsenal to take pictures like these.

Stephanie Jung

Stephanie Jung is another photographer who is also involved with urban like photography. She takes lots of pictures of mostly buildings and cities in, what seems to be, a sort of burst technique and puts them together to create a distorted effect. I think these photos are very interesting as I’m not sure what the meaning is behind them.

Here are some samples:

Analysis

Jung’s work captures the everyday life in the city. She takes these photos at the right time of day to capture different moods. This one for instance has a very gloomy look, especially with the dark green appearance. It creates a sort of sad and lonely environment. And it’s distorted to show perhaps everything that is going on at the same time the photo was took, there is lots of different activity the people are doing in this city whether that be working, talking, eating or anything else that could be potentially happening. Because of this, I think these photos overall are made to show us that were are overpopulating the planet, it will continue to happen and increase and we can’t do anything about it. As of now, there are just over 8 Billion people on planet earth. Which will not mean any good for the environment as now there are more people taking up more space and causing more pollution etc. Humans only make the world worse.

Some places I have in mind to take pictures at are The Waterfront, Fort Regent, Car Parks, The Big Chimney, Harbours and High Rises.

I will try other things during my photoshoot however, like trash washed up on the beach, litter scattered around places, buildings and places that are overgrown with leaves, vines, trees etc.

Here are some extra ideas:

What is it?

Anthropocene is how the world has been altered through human activity.

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. Wikipedia

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.

How is jersey affected by Anthropocene?

The economy of Jersey is a highly developed social market economy. It is largely driven by international financial services and legal services, which accounted for 39.5% of total GVA in 2019, a 4% increase on 2018.Jersey is considered to be an offshore financial centre. Jersey has the preconditions to be a microstate, but it is a self-governing Crown dependency of the UK. It is considered to be a corporate tax haven by many organisations.

Due to Jersey’s growing financial centre we now have a rise in corporate office buildings being built, which is industrializing the town centre. This could be seen as beneficial as it is opening Jersey up to better resources. However, the huge modern buildings are taking the beauty away from the original architecture found all around the island and modernizing it.

Where?

I would like to take my photoshoot in town in busy industrialized areas.

What?

I am going to focus on creating light trails from car lights with big buildings in the background.

When?

I am going to take this photoshoot during rush hour in the evening.

What Is Anthropocene?

Anthropocene is an epoch about the most recent state Planet Earth is in and how humans have altered it and are impacting the planet.

I am tasked with taking several photoshoots involving this topic for my mock exam. Here are some examples of photos and locations I can use:

Locations:

La Collette, St. Ouen, St. Helier, Harbours, Ocean, Airport.

Subjects:

Bins, Cars, Rubbish, Smoke, Pollution, Plastic in sea, Any sign of Man intercepting with nature.

Mood Board:

The Great Wave combines Le Gray’s technical skill with grandness. 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.

The 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. The conflation aims to transform a specific place into a space of greater universality.

Both could be described as landscape pictures. What kinds of landscapes do they describe?

Both images show different types of landscapes, one being very simplistic and the other being quite abstract however they both show a seascape

What similarities do you notice about these two pictures?

They both are seascapes.

What differences do you notice?

Dafna Talmor‘s image is very abstract, with images of different seascapes placed together and making a montage idea whereas, even if, Le Grey’s image is made up of two different images, it’s still a lot less abstract that Talmor’s image

What words/phrases best describe each of these landscapes?

Ominous, Cold, Dark. Stormy

In which of these landscapes would you prefer to live? 

Gustav Le Grey’s as the image is more inviting and an actual structure is seen.