Altered Ocean

Book Info

Title: altered ocean
Author: Mandy Barker
Published: 2019
By: Germany (Overlapse)
Edition: 1st

Review

This book accompanies the exhibition of the same name containing work produced by Mandy Barker. Her work documents the impact that plastics and other items produced by mankind has on the environment. In particular, the seas and oceans and the creatures that inhabit them.

The book is extremely informative. Each section contains an introduction that tells you something about the images that follow it. How items were obtained and where from; the reasons for certain sets of images, and more. Each of these is explained either briefly or in more detail through the essays that accompany the works.

Captions expand on what you are seeing in each image and have been chosen with care.

The images vary from fascinating, through sad, to shocking.

Images that have been made using items found following the Indonesian Tsunami leave you wondering about what happened to their owners, and sad because these bits may be the last remnants of a person’s life. Tossed around by the sea and ocean, only to end up somewhere many miles from where they were once used by a living human being.

Shocking images include those like the one made from the plastic contents of an albatross chick’s stomach.

Some of the works are a collaboration. For instance, the piece that uses footballs that were found around the world. Barker put out a request for people to send her footballs that had been found washed up on beaches or found floating in the sea or ocean.

Barker has researched her subject well, including talking to experts on marine pollution as well as taking part in expeditions, to measure the effects of plastic pollution on the marine environment, herself.

I was disappointed not to make it to the exhibition when it was on show in Bristol. Nothing can make up for seeing the artwork displayed as the artist or curator decided it should be shown. The book, however, does allow you to see the artwork, even if not full size and the way it was at the exhibition.

The essays that sit alongside the artwork are interesting and shed light on how Altered Ocean came about.

Although nothing can compare to seeing artwork in the flesh, having these images in book form allow me the chance to look at them whenever I want and to draw inspiration from them when it comes to my own work that is based around waste and the impact mankind is having on the environment.

Relating to my own practice

The most useful part of the book for me was the Sketchbook Extracts. As a photographer studying both on the Foundation in Photography course and now on the degree course using a sketchbook has seemed an alien concept.  For me sketchbooks are something that artists use to draw or paint things that then develop into the final artwork.

The sketchbook that I carry around with me daily is filled with mind maps, printouts of maps and the odd sketch to help me visualise ideas around sequences of photographs. For instance, the 3 images for my Square Mile assignment of the tunnel (both ends, and the middle seen where the concrete outside appears above ground) was scribbled in my sketchbook, along with ideas for two further images I want to do, taken from inside the tunnel looking out.

The majority of what it contains is just writing, words.

I do have a single photo in this sketchbook. It’s off some leaves I found, hanging on a tree, while taking the photos for Square Mile. I would have loved to use the image, but it just didn’t fit. I’m just going to have to keep it until some time I find a way to use it.

Why is it so special? Well, the leaves are blue. The leaves around them are green but these two leaves are blue. The trunk of the tree had what looked like blue paint or dye splashed on it so the leaves must have somehow got covered in it too but hanging there among all that greenery they just stood out, capturing the attention and leaving you wondering how they got that colour.

The extracts from Barker’s sketchbooks resonated with me when I saw them. For me they are an example of how to do them well, something that I aspire to.

Since then I’ve seen how other photographers use sketchbooks in their work and I’m starting to get an idea of how to use them as a photographer.

Buying a copy of Altered Ocean, a copy that I can revisit any time I want, was a good decision. That the book will I’m sure inspire me to look at my own work in different ways is the icing on the cake.