This work is created through a camera-less photographic process that stems from the very early days of photography. With exposure to the sun, silver gelatin paper records the plastic and plant material that is placed on top of it. The violence of the sun’s rays print out the photogram rearranging the nano-silver matrix of the paper. I then bring the paper into the darkroom to archivally fix it.
Life itself is dependent on the sun, yet our actions are the number one contributor to the heating of the earth. One big factor is our plastic obsession. In this work, I am replacing the flower of the plant with a single-use plastic bottle bottom. The sun going through the bottom of the bottle makes an interesting flower-like shape, but there is something more perverse happening. Plastic comes from petroleum products and greenhouse gases are released in the creation of each piece of plastic. Greenhouse gasses trap the sun’s rays, heating the earth and causing damage to the flora and fauna, wreaking havoc on our food supply, weather, oceans, and much more. Our actions are creating a new epoch, termed the Anthropocene. Similarly, I am creating a new species of plant life created out of single-use plastic.