Out of the Loop

‘Out of the loop’ references the link between local and global waste issues and its repercussions on the natural environment, even in our own backyard. The title is a reference to waste material that has escaped ‘closed- or open-loop’ recycling, neither of which will compost or safely biodegrade into the natural environment, a fatal consequence of our throw-away society.

​All of these plastic bags were found and photographed in the early morning, over a period of 12 months along a 2.5 mile stretch of the Regent's Canal in the London borough of Hackney. My interest was drawn to their evident ambiguous likeness to deep-sea creatures, which appealed to my memory of childhood days watching any nature programme on the gogglebox.

Each bag or piece of plastic was shot as found, floating languidly in the slow current of the canal. All that I have done in addition to the usual digital processing is to erase most of the small debris from the water surface, making their actual size and location in the body of water less clear and more impressive. My aim is to make people work these images out for themselves and perhaps contemplate and understand how possible and likely it is for any marine creature to mistake these for carrion or live bait only to cause suffocation, starvation and ultimately a slow unnecessary death.

My hope back then was to show them on billboards in and around shopping areas, to show that in some form or another, discarded plastic will not simply disappear out of sight, out of mind. Despite not finding the funding to do this, I have shown this concept as mock-ups below.

A few of these images were displayed as part of collaborative work:

• PhotoMonth at The Printspace, London 2012

• Waste-Agency: Collaborative show organised by Platform-7 at the redundant HMV store in Leadenhall in the City of London 2015