Meditation on Excess
Plastic debris from everyday life—packaging, fishing gear, toys, and single-use containers—has become a defining feature of the world’s oceans. Rather than disappearing, these materials persist for centuries, breaking down into microplastics that contaminate marine ecosystems, enter the food chain, and have now been detected in drinking water, sea salt, and even the human body.
Photographic artist MANDY BARKER confronts this crisis by collecting plastic waste from shorelines around the world and transforming it into meticulously composed photographs. By isolating and reassembling discarded debris, she makes the scale of ocean pollution both tangible and unavoidable, revealing plastic waste as a lasting material record of the Anthropocene.