WHEN PLASTICS TOUCH THE HUMAN BODY
In this photography project I am interested in connection between nude human body and environmental pollution. The littering of our planet with trash. Environmental non-usable things I started to observe during my photography studies. First time I started to notice trash and understand their forms was when I left the art gallery. I think at that time the artistic inspiration that I felt after my gallery visit, helped to notice the garbage outside. They could be seen everywhere I went and this made me think of how our environment is being polluted by them. I started looking at them with a bigger focus and seeing them in artistic way.
Seeing trash in the streets and nature brought me to see human body and trash in juxtaposition through a camera lens. I choose nude photography genre because I wanted to show trash in a different and more eccentric way. In my photos people are shown like permanent consumers enveloped by these materials. Through the nude and vulnerable human body I want to draw people’s attention to the fragile and short human’s existence in the world and how garbage still stays after people leave. Therefore humans have responsibility for our current nature’s situation.
My observation of permanent littering, also led to notice the environmental change that is happening, where trash is increasing. After seeing such trash like car tires or plastics in nature, there comes a realisation how these items are dishormonizing such place. However in the city, which is a place surrounded by concrete and in a way is a clean location. The garbage could find it’s harmony with the city and gain a different context. They became adaptable with their surroundings and are photogetic in the sterile background of the city.
This project is trying to stimulate people to pay attention to their surrounding environment. To understand that one of the main decisive factors of nature pollution is not appreciating what we have now.
This series transformed into an exhibition that was shown at the Vilnius College of Design.
Technical characteristics of the project:
Some of the photographs been made with Sony A7, retouched and printed with ink-jet printer.
Some of the photos been made with 35mm handmade pinhole camera, developed in darkroom, scanned with Epson scanner and printed with ink-jet printer.
All the black and white photos been captured with the 10x15cm 1930s large format camera, developed and printed by me in analogue technique.