Plastic Utopia: Fisherman's threads intertwining.
Giclée print on Hahnemühle FineArt Pearl paper.
Size 30x20 cm without white border.
"'Plastic Utopia' is a project about the impact of our consumption on the environment. My hope is that nature will be strong and flexible enough to eventually absorb this plastic. The series is at the same time a reflection on my own behavior. I was working with artists from other disciplines and we decided to go into the field and do research in a pseudoscientific way. For example, we visited apparently clean areas - parks and beaches - where we took stock of the situation and took the material we found back home.
After a while I started to place those finds back in nature and photograph them with a view to the future. Flash light was given a leading role in order to better frame the object and give the feeling of a commercial product report, as the product was once marketed. It immediately gave me the opportunity to shift the colors in post-processing and give the images a more futuristic feel.
With 'Plastic Utopia' I wanted to show people both the beauty of nature and the beauty of waste. I also wanted viewers to ask questions about my approach: am I making it too beautiful, too aesthetic? Maybe, but maybe this is a good way to force people to think about the subject. One journalist indicated that he strongly disagreed with my approach to the series until he heard my story.
In this image I used the threads I found on the beach and in the dunes. I placed them among the nasturtiums in my garden and used Holi powder while lying on my stomach to create this image. The series has been published in China, South Africa, Russia and Italy, among others, and exhibited in France, Brazil and the Netherlands."
Henri Blommers is an Amsterdam-based art photographer who generally works analogue, with a variety of cameras and techniques. He creates an otherworldly sanctuary full of bold colors, based on contemporary socially engaged themes such as plastic and its impact on our future, and digital influences on our lives, and is co-creator of Hello Beautiful magazine that fights against the stigma surrounding HIV.
In his projects, Henri materializes the images by boiling film in vegetable material, soaking negatives in salt for weeks or spraying agricultural chemicals onto film.
Henri Blommers
The photo prints are printed in one batch every two weeks, at the beginning and middle of the month. You will receive an email when your order has been shipped or can be picked up.
Plastic Utopia: Fisherman's threads intertwining.
Giclée print on Hahnemühle FineArt Pearl paper.
Size 30x20 cm without white border.