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It’s Earth Day! Nearly six billion pounds of plastic bottles are discarded each year and it is estimated that half of these once contained only water. With just a third of these containers destined to reach a recycling facility, the 200-billion-dollar bottled water industry stands as a significant contributor to landfills worldwide. In his photography series, All Consumed, artist Gary Emrich draws focus on the growing industry, its advertising imagery, and its embrace of single-use packaging. To create the photographs on display, Emrich layers a transparent clamshell container with water bottle packaging and places it on a light table in his studio. He then fills the plastic depressions with bottled water and photographs the composition with a large format film camera. Here, Emrich is careful to produce compositions that captivate, challenge, and ultimately beg us to reconsider our own relationship with objects that are so easily consumed and discarded. "All Consumed" by Gary Emrich is on view pre-security in Harvey Milk Terminal 1 until June 29, and online: http://bit.ly/AllConsumed
This image was posted on April 22, 2021.