Beautiful Litter
Shocked by the amount of litter in my local area, I began to photograph this phenomenon, a socially unacceptable behaviour, born out of our throw away society. Rubbish is dropped or disregarded without a thought for our environment. It was particularly upsetting to find litter around local Beauty Spots, wondering how those who take the time to enjoy our countryside can have such little respect for it? To find an ‘Esso’ carrier bag or Fruit Shoot bottle amongst the lush green hedgerow’s of Saltram Estate was disturbing. However, this apparent disrespect has been inspirational. Particularly inspiring were the bright designs on the packets and wrappers, created by graphic designers to sell products, or branding as it’s more commonly known.
Drawn to the bright colourful aesthetics of the branding it was decided to document each item in an archival photographic process. A transformation occurred in which the archival document of a branded piece of litter now became a piece of art. One found this particularly interesting since prior to this project I hadn’t ever considered branding or package design as an art form. In fact I had rarely appreciated the design on any packaging, rather I had used the contents and then just thrown it in the bin. When we shop, branding is of huge importance, sending us subliminal messages, drawing us to a particular product. The packaging probably has far more of an impact on our choices than we are aware of. In terms of this project, branding has become such a point of interest, that the branding as an art theme was now the main focus, whereby, now the branded packaging is now serving to highlight the issue of our ‘throw away society’.
More images can be found in my recently published book ‘Beautiful Litter’ available from Bob Books, which won their accolade of 'Book of the Month' for August. You will find my book here http://www.bobbooks.co.uk/bookshop/beautiful-litter
Shocked by the amount of litter in my local area, I began to photograph this phenomenon, a socially unacceptable behaviour, born out of our throw away society. Rubbish is dropped or disregarded without a thought for our environment. It was particularly upsetting to find litter around local Beauty Spots, wondering how those who take the time to enjoy our countryside can have such little respect for it? To find an ‘Esso’ carrier bag or Fruit Shoot bottle amongst the lush green hedgerow’s of Saltram Estate was disturbing. However, this apparent disrespect has been inspirational. Particularly inspiring were the bright designs on the packets and wrappers, created by graphic designers to sell products, or branding as it’s more commonly known.
Drawn to the bright colourful aesthetics of the branding it was decided to document each item in an archival photographic process. A transformation occurred in which the archival document of a branded piece of litter now became a piece of art. One found this particularly interesting since prior to this project I hadn’t ever considered branding or package design as an art form. In fact I had rarely appreciated the design on any packaging, rather I had used the contents and then just thrown it in the bin. When we shop, branding is of huge importance, sending us subliminal messages, drawing us to a particular product. The packaging probably has far more of an impact on our choices than we are aware of. In terms of this project, branding has become such a point of interest, that the branding as an art theme was now the main focus, whereby, now the branded packaging is now serving to highlight the issue of our ‘throw away society’.
More images can be found in my recently published book ‘Beautiful Litter’ available from Bob Books, which won their accolade of 'Book of the Month' for August. You will find my book here http://www.bobbooks.co.uk/bookshop/beautiful-litter