Introduction –
How the use of plastic will change the morphology of the earth is yet to be discovered. However, these geological transformations and the effects of these changes to earth’s life are starting to be visible and to be portrayed by artists and photographers. Human beings have changed their landscape since the beginning of sedentarism. That is to say, since human beings transitioned from nomadic lifestyle to a way of life where groups of humans settle in one location for longer or permanent periods of time.1 If well this is true, it is during the last decades that humans have had a significant effect in the alterations of the planet including planet climate and ecosystems. This unofficial geologic time is called the Anthropocene.2 Scientists suggest the plastic-geological sediments in the stratigraphic layers could be used to mark the start of the Anthropocene, “just as past epochs in Earth had been defined.”3 Therefore, the mass production of Plastic may signify that after the stone age or iron age, the epoch we are living may be called the Plastic Age.4
Although Landscape as a distinct art subject matter is relatively recent, humans have pictured their environments since they have had the means to do so.5 This interest in the Landscape and its representation as a topic of study is explored across wide variety of Art Disciplines such us: Painting, Sculpture or Photography. The Landscape is also embodied through entire art movements such as English Landscape Romanticism, Land Art or the wide variety of Landscape Photography.
With his photography, Keith Arnatt maintains a conversation with Landscape History of Art. His Photographic series works Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (A.O.N.B) (1982-84), and Miss Grace’s Lane (1986-87) present different approaches to photography and also to the type of landscape and human interaction upon it. As a conceptual artist, rather than a landscape photographer, Arnatt’s sometimes satiric photographs demonstrate clear, easily observed, changes in our quotidian environments. Arnatt’s photographs and the evolution of his photographic practice can be taken as a guide to explore changes in the environment due to human activity. Plastic waste presence is tangible in both series of photographs, especially in the latest work, Miss Grace’s Lane, where the idea of photographic and environment plasticity is also explored. Arnatt’s exploration on Landscape is an example and a statement on how we create the Landscape when we paint it, photograph it or every time we look at it. In other words, when we take a photo, make a painting or place a sculpture in a scenery we are creating the landscape, a difference in the environment. We are portraying our own personal view and/or feelings relating to the area.6 Thus, representing our own frame of reference instead of a more widely applicable reality.
On the other hand, Contemporary visual artist Corinne Silva uses photography and video works to break up with the prevailing, traditional modes of the visualization of the Landscape.7 Silva’s work, as Arnatt’s work, is informed by historic precedents of Landscape Photography. However, her work is focused on “questions of Landscape in relation to colonial practices, knowledge transmission, mythology, trauma and resistance.”8 For example, on Silva’s work Bad Lands (2008-11) plastic is used to analyse the “authentic and the artificial”. Her work surveys how ideologies or fantasies are propelled onto the desertic landscape of Almeria (Spain). This landscape “is being dramatically shaped by the connected forces of economic and lifestyle migration.”9 Through visual techniques such as the photographic fragmentation of the landscape, the inexistence of human portrayal and interweaving narratives, Silva constructs a notion of “human dominance over nature.”10
Plastic Contextualization –
Before surveying the environmental effects of plastic in the landscape and how this is depicted, it is worth understanding where the word and material idea of plastic comes from. Plastic is a word that comes from the Greek ‘Plastikos’ meaning ‘pliable and easily shaped’.11
Most likely, Greeks used ‘Plastikos’ to describe unhardened versions of clay.12 Another important term that helps to understand the relationship between nature and plastic is ‘Polymer’ which means ‘of many parts.’13 In other words, Polymers are made of long chains of molecules. There are many examples of these formations in nature. One example of a natural Polymer is Cellulose. Since 1850’s however, humans have learned to make Synthetic Polymers made of long chains of atoms, normally much bigger than those found in nature.14 Consequently, these chains are hard to break or decompose by nature, guaranteeing its permanence in the environment.
Nevertheless, the history of plastic is not all dark. The first Synthetic Polymer was developed in 1855 by Alexander Parkers to replace ivory and avoid mass slaughtering of animals like rhinos or elephants to obtain their horns and tusks.15 Advertisements praised this celluloid as the saviour of the elephant and the tortoise.16 Subsequently, American inventor Hyats experimented with this celluloid and invented the first flexible photographic film used for still and motion pictures. This helped to create the exploding market of celluloid.17 After this, in 1907 Belgian chemist Leo Baekeland invented the first fully synthetic plastic. It was known as Bakelite and it was made by combining the chemicals Formaldehyde and Phenol under heat and pressure. 18 It could be easily mass produced and was ideal to create affordable yet desirable products for trends such as Art Deco. Some designs became icons of the 20th century as the Purma Camera, made almost entirely by Bakelite, apart from the glass lens, plastic viewfinder optics, shutter and spring mechanisms.19 Then, new types of Synthetic Polymers were created and plastics like Nylon or Perspex became very important for the second world war.20 During WWII plastic production in the united states increased 300%.21
Consequently, it is easy to understand how plastic has become an everyday material. It poses a quantity of interesting characteristics to create objects. Some of these qualities are: its malleability and capacity of transformation, its light weight and it has the capacity of shock and water resistance. Additionally, plastic is thermically and electrically insulating and has a low melting point compared to metals.22 Plastics are now used for clothing fibres, agriculture, construction, packaging and unnumerable range of uses. Notably, since the Great Acceleration in 1945 the world has suffered a constant increase of this material. Today, Plastic represents 80% of petrochemicals usage. Packaging is the largest market, using 40% of the resources, and building and construction is the second with 20%.23 While Synthetic Polymers products are easily disposable, they last hundreds of years in the environment.24 As a result of being difficult to be decomposed by nature, plastic waste was first observed in the 1960s with the concern increasing by 1970s, 80s thanks to a growing preoccupation of a potential threat to human health.25 Plastics are now associated with high levels of waste and leakage to the environment26 due to single use plastic, inadequate end of life treatment, low reuse, recycle and the high potential of disintegration into microplastics.27 While the attention of the effects of plastic in the aquatic environments has increased, the effects of plastics on terrestrial environment has remain not as widely explored.28 Nonetheless, 80% of Marine plastic debris has been produced, consumed and disposed on land.29 Either way, long time effects of microplastics on the planet and human populations are still unknown.30
Keith Arnatt and Corinne Silva photographs can be shown as an example to represent, some of the big anthropocentric changes in the everyday landscapes due to non-compostable rubbish as plastic.
Section 1 –
Keith Arnatt (1930 – 2008) was a conceptual British Artist related to Minimalism, Conceptualism and Photography. Like other contemporaneous artists such as Richard Long or Robert Smithson, Arnatt’s earliest work explored the boundaries between Landscape and Sculpture.31 With over 40 years of artistic trajectory Arnatt’s work can tell us much about the way in which photography has been placed within the art world, particularly in Britain.32 In the1960s Arnatt started his career as a conceptual artists moving the use of photography from documentary and documentation to art photography practice. In this way Arnatt has paralleled the recent history of the medium from its peripheral position during 1970s to its noticeably more respected status in today’s contemporary art.33 However, Arnatt’s work seems like it has been overlooked. According to Adam Scovell, Arnatt was never quite considered conceptual enough because of the high level of technical skill with craft creation, but, far too audacious in his methods to be considered artesian enough to stand comfortably as a photographer.34 In other words, he was caught between different genres of Art. By charging his work with irony, satire and humour, Arnatt developed his own artistic language. Although, his concepts and methods were close to minimalism and occasionally Land Art, some of his works as Mirror Plug or Invisible Mirror revealed (both 1968) work as objects and events. The role of photographs for this type of works is to ‘document the artists actions and attach them to specific locations.’35 Arnatt often shows an interest in the materiality of the environment and relation of place, as it is for example with his works A.O.N.B (1982-85), Self-Burial (1969), Miss Grace’s Lane (1986-87) or Pictures from a Rubbish Tip (1988-89/2004), where he displays a close relationship with the Earth, the environment and its plasticity.
As mentioned before, it is true that the fact of representing the landscape from their own perspective, is already an interaction and a modification of the landscape.36 The practice dates back to cave art painting, going through other examples such as Minoan Frescos, Chinese landscapes or western movements as for example Expressionism or British Romantic Landscapes. Artistic movement in which there are considered to be three major categories:
The Sublime, The Picturesque and the Pastoral. British Romantic Landscapes painting styles are responses to the accelerated urbanization in the Industrial Revolution.37 Sculpture also has a profound interaction with the landscape and human interaction upon it. From traditional garden sculptures to land art in all its varieties. It is also linguistically that humans have profound relationship with Soil. In fact, the word ‘human’ comes from the Latin humanus compounded by humus which means ‘earth’ and the suffix -anus that indicates ‘origin or belonging’. Therefore meaning ‘who belongs to the earth’. This comes from the belief, in many cultures, that humans were cast directly from the earth.38 As it could hardly be otherwise, Photography also began to explore the landscape as a subject and human relationship with it. History of the Landscape can be so profound because “ ‘Landscape’ is not all things for all people, but a highly differentiated discourse on representing space.”39 Additionally to the landscape representation, humans have physically created an impact in the Landscape since the early days of their sedentary life, creating a more accessible and productive environment around them by altering the landscape and adding new conditions referring to soil and climate.40 In spite of this, it was not until 1950 that the planet have has experienced an enormous escalation of plastic production and waste. Together with rapid industrialization, increase of land clearing for agriculture or the modification of water streams have provoked an increased in the modification of the new environment and landscape.41 Subsequently, in 2016 the Anthropocene Working Group stablished that the Anthropocene began with the Great Acceleration in 1950.42 Since then, humans are directly responsible for the environmental conditions. In brief, this is the way in which contemporary humans leave traces of their journey through Earth.
In consequence, the massive expansion of plastic waste from 1982 to 1984 led Arnatt to develop the series of photographs called Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (A.O.N.B), see Figure 1. Arnatt was captivated by the idea of ‘official beauty’ locations and the impact of human manifestation upon them.43 He was fascinated by this idea of ‘official beauty’ created by the long history of landscape in the arts, specially British Romantic Landscapes. With a 4×5 view camera he photographed scenes of the Wye Valley to explore ideas of beauty and our expectations of the Landscape Photograph.44 In his writing on Arnatt’s A.O.N.B Scovell observes that: “By assigning these places as “beautiful” Arnatt is suggesting the links between human presence and the aesthetic pleasure of a landscape to be one that is unrealistically conservative and inflexible.”45 This is to say that with A.O.N.B, as much as with Miss Grace’s Lane, Arnatt confronts the idea of idyllic landscape picture, where human traces are very often erased in its representations. A significant percentage of landscape photography and painting disregards the existence of the human intervention when portraying the landscape. As can be seen in Figure 1, Arnatt’s photographic work does the opposite. While maintaining a picturesque resemblances to connect with British Landscape tradition, Arnatt uses human imprints within the landscape as an important part of the visual and conceptual composition of the photographs. Therefore, he removes any pastoral or idyllic feeling from the scene.46 He does not try to hide the traces of the human presence but embraces it to create the picture.47
Section 2 –
In the late 1980’s a change in Arnatt’s photographic style is obvious. While previous works like A.O.N.B are made in Black and White, Miss Grace’s Lane uses colour. The change from Black and White to colour photography comes from the change of references. The references for A.O.N.B are traditional photographs, while Miss Grace’s Lane inspiration comes with an specific light on the sunset which is impossible to represent in Black and White. In Miss Grace’s Lane Arnatt gives to his photographs the same ingredients as to painting. The reds of the light mixes with the reds of the plastic bags, and despite what it is, the effect is beautiful, as a painting is beautiful.48 To create these pictures, Arnatt rarely edited the photographs. They are usually shot in camera with the correct settings, exposure, lights, etc.49
Arnatt’s intention of this Photographic series is pursuing ‘the ability of the camera to transform that which is photographed,’50 therefore, finding a new human way of modifying the landscape. Arnatt also states that the photographs of Miss Grace’s Lane are parodies of Samuel Palmer’s Romantic Paintings.51 However, it is worth saying that Arnatt’s work is more intuitive than premeditative.52 Miss Grace’s Lane series of photographs are taken along a track of the Forest of Dean called by this name. Miss Grace’s Lane area is a non-official rubbish dump. Plastic appears in the photographs due to the escalating accumulation of it in the area. Arnatt affirms in an interview that plastic waste is photographed because “Rubbish is part of the background where I live.”53 In other words, Miss Grace’s Lane is again an exploration of human action upon increasingly urbanised habitats with newly created objects and materials that easily become waste and scraps. These new parameters of human interaction with the environment are now playing a very influential role in our everyday landscapes.
Arnatt’s work may look environmental because of the concentration of rubbish in the environment but, the series of photographs are not made with ecological intentions. As mentioned before, the photographs are comments and reflections on the tradition of landscape photography and painting.54 They are Epistemological rather than Ontological, with regard to the photographic methods rather than the nature of things. In this instance, plastic and its environmental effects.55 Despite the primary intentions of Arnatt while creating Miss Grace’s Lane, these photographs still represent human environments and the effect of the Anthropocene on the landscape. In fact, Miss Grace’s Lane focuses on the exploration of plastic and plastic waste, specially packaging, which, as mentioned before, uses 40% of the worldwide petrochemical resources. Through this photographic series Arnatt also explores the idea of ‘Plasticity’ as a capability of change, looking for its significance in the origin of the Greek word ‘Plastikos’. This is a concept that years later would be explored by the Philosopher Catherine Malabou’s with her work Plasticity and Form, 1994. Malabou explores plasticity as a concept and the possibility of plastic ontology, where plastic stands for both, “the ability to take form (as in unharden clay) and the ability to give form (as in plastic arts).”56 Arnatt accentuates plastic’s dramatic transformation by the C-Types Colour prints photographic processes where the plastic materials of the photographs also transforms. This transformation of the portrayed material is explored in Miss Grace’s Lane and further developed in his work Howler’s Line (1987-88).
Arnatt seems to suggest that evidences of a landscape being used and lived in by human beings should not necessarily be seen as a bad thing. Except, when such evidence begins to interfere upon the other inhabitants of that environment.57 Indeed, what Arnatt is picturing in Miss Grace’s Lane is the accumulation of Synthetic Polymers, which can be used as an evidence that human waste is altering the landscape, the earth and its composition. At the same time, Miss Grace’s Lane can be read with anthropological tension between the seen and the knowing of the plastic accumulation in the landscape and its effects. This tension is associated to still life regarding the notion of death and mortality. One of the aspects that makes Arnatt’s work unusual in its correlation with still life is the choices of subject matter of his photographs, which are considered ‘no subjects’ as for example, plastic bags or construction remains in the landscapes. (Figure 2 and Figure 1) These ‘no subjects’ represent the marginal side of life, which is as important as other sides of life. In Figure 2 Arnatt brings to the table the unseen to be seen in a pictorial, sculptural and photographic way. This is in fact a political act.
In addition to Miss Grace’s Lane statements Figure 1 showcases a photo with obvious evidence of fly-tipping next to a river. This demonstrates a rebellion against the ‘faceless bureaucrats’ with hierarchical social privileges to designate Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty.58 This makes a statement in a similar but contrasting method to that which Richard Mabey’s had done a decade earlier with Unofficial Countryside (1973), publication in which the author creates a memorandum on how the natural world beauty thrives against the odds. This poses a question of who decides what is worth noticing as beautiful in the landscape. Miss Grace’s Lane and A.O.N.B, together with other works such as Corinne Silva’s Badlands, Mitch Epstein’s American Power, James Morris’s Llamberis Pass, Snowdonia, Gwynedd from the series A Landscape of Wales, 2010 demonstrate an approach in how ‘to Landscape’ can be exercised as a carrier to articulate an ideological or political posture.59 Perhaps it is because of the abundant representations of the interaction between industry and the environment in contemporary photography that the legacy of the sublime landscape can be traced.60 These themes like Plastic Pollution (Miss Grace’s Lane), Colonial Practices (Badlands, 2008-11, Silva), Extraction Industries (Ocean Warwick oil platform, Dauphine Island, Alabama, 2005, Mitch Epstein’s), destruction of the ecosystems and more recently geological history and stratigraphic can be called ‘Anthropocentric Art.’61 Anthropocentric Art shows a mutation on human relationship with the world, the environment and its ecosystems.62 The aesthetics of the Anthropocene brings an unsettling effect from how it brings the world into a specific form, therefore a specific relation with the viewer, rather than what the image depicts.63 Nature now returns the gaze. The sense of separation between human and the surroundings vanishes, revealing indissoluble interconnectedness.64 Works like Miss Grace’s Lane or for example Tara Donovan’s (in a sculptural way) play with plastic and the scale of the work. Either by portraying a cropped landscape with a plastic bag as a subject or making an art installation with Styrofoam cups. These games of scales reflects on cumulative effects of the Anthropocene.65 One plastic bag is a piece of Polyethylene but, the accumulation of them is an ecological disaster.
Section 3 –
Lens-based artist Corinne Silva explores restrictions and potentials of the media while investigating the “evolving relationships between politics, landscapes and art histories”.66 Silva’s approach to landscape imagery is inspired by the New Topographic Photographers of the 1970’s, where the human presence is not portrayed by its image but is implied by its traces. Some examples of New Topographic photographers are Lewis Baltz, Robert Adams or Stephen Shore who focused their lenses to the manmade alterations of the American Landscape.67 This photographic evasion of the Romantic convention of the picturesque is also navigated by Arnatt’s A.O.N.B and Miss Grace’s Lane, as he was also a contemporary of these photographers.
Silva’s Badlands (Figure 3) body of work focuses particularly in Spanish’s South-Eastern area in Almeria referred as ‘Mar de Plastico’ (Sea of Plastic).This location received its name due to the vast quantity of Greenhouses constructed with humongous segments of Polyethylene plastic precariously tied to metal and wooden posts, resulting in the area’s aerial and terrestrial white appearance of the area.68 This area comprises the biggest composition of greenhouses in the world and it is visible from Space.69 Spain represents, after China the second country in the world with the biggest quantity of greenhouses hectares.70 This development of intensive agriculture started in 1960s when young people migrated here from other places in the country and the government offered financial help to settle with the intention of creating an increase in the economy. In around 30 years this area has been transformed from an arid dessert to a plastic sea, also known as Europe’s vegetable plot. Representing today 38% of Spain’s horticultural production71 and from there 80% of the produce is exported to the U.K, Netherlands, France and Germany.72 But, the increase in the economy has been almost entirely channelled to construction of golf and holiday resorts, creating discontinuous populations that increasingly overlap each other,73 incrementing social and economic inequalities.
Furthermore, the massive increase in plastic use distributes Synthetic Polymers residues through the coastline, mountains and riverbeds also causing a profound impact in marine environment, where the residues are washed downhill by the rain.74 Moreover all extensive agricultural land is heavily contaminated with microplastics.75 For instance, Almeria’s greenhouse complex generates an average of 33500 tons of plastic waste every year. As per ‘Junta de Andalucía’s’ data 85% of the plastic waste is recycled. Which means that 5000 tons of plastic per year are not treated.76 These types of plastics products used in agriculture are called Agriplastics. Some examples of Agriplastics are: plastics for mulching, polytunnels and covers. The use of plastic in agriculture goes from weather and insect protection, storage, transportation or nutrient granules for soil alimentation.77 One of the big issues with the use of this products is that Polymers do not fully break down but fragment into micro- and nanometre-sized plastics. There is a raising concern of the potential long-term consequences for soil quality and fauna.78 These consternations have been raised by Scientists, advising that the intensified use of Agriplastics could present a long-term risk on soil degradation, which in turn could reduce crop productivity.79 For example, lingering plastic film can have detrimental effects on soil structure, salt levels, nutrient transport and crop growth.80 Plastic mulches risk altering soil quality, depleting soil organic matter stocks, increasing soil water repellence and releasing greenhouse gases.81 It has been demonstrated that microplastics can change the soil environment. Scientific experiments show that the addition of microplastics to soil matter resulted in altering the physical parameters of soil, with consequences not just to the water dynamics but also microbial activity of the soil.82 The result is the alteration of the soil ecosystem. Noting that every 1 gram of healthy soil can contain more than one billion of organisms of over 10,000 different species83 this can become a major problem. The partition of macro plastics into microplastics interweaved with soil is only one of the ways in which plastics have made it into the food chain. Recent studies have reported 600 microplastic particles per kg of salt, 660 microplastic fibres per kg of honey and about 109 fragments of microplastics per litre of beer.84 Now, we know that microplastic are endocrine disruptors and are implicated in numerous health issues like diabetes, cancer and obesity.85 But we also know that every stage of plastic poses a significant risk to human health86 and, as we can see in Figure 3 plastic is everywhere in Almeria’s Landscape but, some populations are getting more seriously affected than others. The truth is that the issues generated in this borderland areas are more than environmental, they are also part of an humanitarian crisis and plastic colonialism.
The image above (Figure 3), Shaded Settlement I, is a photograph extracted from Silva’s series Bad Lands (2008-2011) which consist of a series of C-type prints, 127cm x 101cm and 101cm x 81cm. Throughout this project Silva is centred in the effects of human traces detected in the borderland territories of the edges of Europe. As Arnatt in Miss Grace’s Lane, Silva’s Badlands scours the plastic material and idea of plasticity to point the physical and symbolic malleability of the Almerian landscape. Plastic “reveals the contradictory effects of globalization.”87 Badlands categorise both realities of the same place. On one hand, Almeria’s Plastic Sea represents a capitalist utopia with northern European migrants enjoying their golf courses, western movies sets and gated communities. On the other hand, we see the tomato farms and the associated precarious shelters made from discarded refuse of agricultural poly-tunnels88 that house irregular migrants from northern and sub Saharan Africa which exemplify the dark side of the capitalist fantasy.89 Through her photography Silva foregrounds the juxtapositions of these two worlds that collide between natural and artificial ecologies resulting from massive agricultural and property developments.90 The neo-liberal “free-market” model of trade creates a form of colonialism perpetuating cheap labour from irregular migrants who perform the essential tasks in a regional economy.91 European governments turn a blind eye to this labour-humanitarian issues with the goal of acquiring the cheapest product. In Badlands, Silva avoids portraying north African migrants as anonymous victims of capitalist exploitation by photographing the houses and housing in the area in relation with their landscapes, as it is pictured in Figure 3.
Conclusion –
Through the idea of Plastic and Plasticity Arnatt and Silva portray how the Earth is being transformed due to human actions upon it. The Anthropocene is here and with it the consequences. We create spectacular materials and landscapes in favour of our commodity and “wellbeing”. Synthetic Polymers represent one of the exceptional inventions of the 20th Century but, during the recent decades consumerism and bad disposal of plastics has dangerously increased numbers and are largely responsible for the changes to our planet and for perpetuating harmful human relationships. We are in what scientist call ‘The Plastic Age’, “the world is now plastic.”92 Microplastics are physically modifying the soil environment, therefore the very composition of the Earth and its chemical by-products have been found in everyone who has been tested. Heather Davis articulates in her book “Plastic Matter” that plastic is emblematic to represent material relations in the twentieth and twenty first centuries “showing how intimately oil has coated nearly every fabric of being, how the synthetic cannot be disentangled from the natural.”93 That is to say, plastic is everywhere and nanoparticles of this material circulate our crops and bodies, with the consequences that this entails.
Almeria’s ‘Mar de Plastico’ jungle is an example to symbolise plastic colonialism and environmental effects of this material. It seems that plastic waste laws are not enforced or are not strong enough, causing thousands of tonnes to be disposed and untreated. This array of Synthetic Polymers residues end up trapped in the soil, breaking into smaller pieces or being washed into the sea, where they become a problem to marine environment. The incorrect disposal of synthetic materials, together with the different uses of Agriplastics, can cause synthetic polymers enter the food chain. Today only some effects of microplastics in the human body are known but, effects of plastic on human life are already brutal. Badlands affirms Max Liboiron’s statement: “Plastic pollution is a violent enactment of colonial land relations.”94 Alemeria’s Sea of Plastic, however is only one of the cases of colonialism and savage capitalism through plastic. These cases go from petrochemical extraction sites, plastic disposal from more industrialised countries, or the workforce in plastic laminated agricultural areas. We are part of the Earth and responsible for the actions that we execute upon it, so we will also have to live with the consequences.
Empty lanes trickle down to the public house,
Whispering sweet nothings to the car park ivy.
You stain the landscape,
Steel bin calling cards, a refuse autograph.
Fly-tip your soul into the heartland of the edge;
The only safe refuge for rotting rubbish.
Rancid on the verge, passing cars’ chiming voices,
Through the waste of a moment.
It was a beautiful view,
For a time.95
Footnotes –
1 Emily A Schultz, Cultural Anthropology: A Perspective on the Human Condition. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018) 7.
2 “Anthropocene,” National Geographic Education: Resource Library: Encyclopedic Entry, National Geographic, 20 May. 2022.
3 Simon L. Lewis and Mark A. Maslin, The Human Planet: How we created the Anthropocene. Vol. 20. (UK: Pelican, 2018) 12.
4 Carrington, Damian. “After Bronze and Iron, Welcome to the Plastic Age, Say Scientists.” Environment: Pollution. The Guardian. 4 Sept. 2019. Web. Jun 2022.
5 Jesse Alexander, Perspectives on Place (London and New York: Fairchild Books, 2015) 8.
6 Alexander, Perspectives on Place, 10-11.
7 Corinne Silva, “Bio,” Researchers: About, UAL, [n.d].
8 Corinne Silva, “About,” Bibliography, Corinne Silva, [n.d].
9 “Badlands,” Portfolio: Badlands, Photomonitor, March 2012.
10 Silva, “About.”
11 Science History Institute, “History and Future of Plastics,” Science Matters: The Case of Plastic, Science History Institute, [n.d].
12 “History of Polypropylene: A Timeline,” Industry Post, Lone Star Chemical, [n.d].
13 “Polymer,” Word, Online Etymology Dictionary, 2022.
14 Science History Institute, “History and Future of Plastics.”
15 Daven Hiskey, “Where the Word ‘Plastic’ Came From,” Feed Your Brain, Today I Found Out. 22 Sept. 2010.
16 Science History Institute, “History and Future of Plastics.”
17 Mary Bellis, “A Brief History of the Invention of Plastics,” Humanities: History and Culture, ThoughtCo, 28 Jan. 2020.
18 Science Museum, “The Age of Plastic: From Parkesine to Pollution,” Objects and Stories: Chemistry. Science Museum, 11 Oct. 2019.
19 “Purma,” History: Purma, Camerapedia Fandom, 21 May. 2014.
20 Chris N. Trueman. “Plastic,” Inventions and Discoveries of the Twentieth Century, History Learning Site, 17 Mar. 2015.
21 Science History Institute, “History and Future of Plastics.”
22 Osborne Industries, “The Properties of Plastics: What Makes Them Unique.” News: Plastic Properties, Osborne Industries, 19 March 2018.
23 “Plastic and Toxic Colonialism: Prof. Alice Mah”, Connected Sociologies, Youtube. 28 Jun. 2022.
24 “The Lifecycle of Plastics.” News: Blogs: The Lifecycle of Plastics, World Wide Found Australia. 1 Jul. 2021.
25 Science History Institute, “History and Future of Plastics.”
26 Susanna Gionfra, “Plastic Pollution in Soil,” News: ISQAPER:Exploring Plastic Pollution in Soil, Institute for European Environmental Policy. 5 Jun. 2018.
27 Gionfra, “Plastic Pollution in Soil.”
28 Gionfra, “Plastic Pollution in Soil.”
29 Gionfra, “Plastic Pollution in Soil.”
30 Leslie, Heather A. and Michael H. Depledge, “Where is the Evidence that Human Exposure to Microplastics is Safe?” Environment International 142 (2020): 105807.
31 David Hurn and Clare Grafik. I Am a Real Photographer: Keith Arnatt Photographs 1974-2002. (London: The Photographers Gallery, 2007) 127.
32 Hurn and Grafik, I Am a Real Photographer, 7.
33 Hurn and Grafik, I Am a Real Photographer, 7.
34 Adam Scovell,. “Responses: Keith Arnatt’S A.O.N.B (1982-1984),” Art, Landscape, Psychogeography, Celluloid Wicker Man, 10 Oct. 2016.
35 “Keith Arnatt Estate.” Artists. Sprüth Magers. 2022.
36 Alexander, Perspectives on Place, 8.
37 Lauren Rabb, “19th Century Landscape: the Pastoral, the Picturesque and the Sublime,” Events, The University of Arizona, Museum of Art, 2 March. 2022.
38 “Humano,” Etimologia de Humano, Etimologias de Chile, 2022.
39 Alexander, Perspectives on Place, 10.
40 “Human Modification of the Environment.” Education: Resource Library. National Geographic. 2022.
41 “Anthropocene.”
42 “Anthropocene.”
43 Zoe Opal, “An Illustrated Essay, Which Shows how Practitioners, Including Yourself, Have Addressed Social Engagement/Activism Through Photography,” Extended Practice: Essay, Word Press, 14 Jan. 2014.
44 Hurn and Grafik, I Am a Real Photographer, 7.
45 Scovell, “Responses: Keith Arnatt’S A.O.N.B (1982-1984)”
46 Blas Gonzalez, “Keith Arnatt,” Photography 2: Landscape, WordPress, 30 Jan. 2018.
47 Hurn and Grafik, I Am a Real Photographer, 7.
48 Susan Butler. Interview with Keith Arnatt, British Library Sounds. 14 Apr. 1993.
49 Keith Arnatt. About. Keith Arnatt. 2022.
50 Hurn and Grafik, I Am a Real Photographer, 42.
51 Hurn and Grafik, I Am a Real Photographer, 42.
52 “Oral History of British Photography. Arnatt, Keith (4 of 5).
53 “Oral History of British Photography. Arnatt, Keith (4 of 5).
54 “Oral History of British Photography. Arnatt, Keith (4 of 5).
55 Alexander, Perspectives on Place, 107.
56 Catherine Malabou, Changer de Différence : Le Féminin et la Question Philosophique, (Paris: Galilée 2009) 75.
57 Scovell, “Responses: Keith Arnatt’S A.O.N.B (1982-1984).
58 Scovell, “Responses: Keith Arnatt’S A.O.N.B (1982-1984).
59 Alexander, Perspectives on Place, 121.
60 Alexander, Perspectives on Place, 122.
61 Eva Horn and Hannes Bergthaller, The Anthropocene: Key Issues for the Humanities. (Oxon and New York, 2020) 96.
62 Horn and Bergthaller, The Anthropocene, 99.
63 Horn and Bergthaller, The Anthropocene, 99.
64 Horn and Bergthaller, The Anthropocene, 101.
65 Horn and Bergthaller, The Anthropocene, 106.
66 “Corinne Silva,” Programme: Corinne Silva. European Prospects, 2022.
67 “New Topographics,” Art Term, Tate, [n.d].
68 “Poniente Almeriense, Almeria, Spain.” Earthdata. NASA. 18 Sep. 2022.
69 Juan Pereira Fernandez, “El Mar de Plástico de Almeria,” Economía, La Region, 18 Aug. 2021.
70 Pereira Fernandez, “El Mar de Plástico de Almeria.”
71 Ines Oort Alonso, “The Environmental Impacts of Greenhouse Agriculture in Almeria, Spain,” Article, Food Unfolded, 23 Sept. 2021.
72 Antonio Fernandez, “Almeria Suma la Mitad de Exportaciones Andaluzas de Frutas y Hortalizas Frescas,” Noticia: Provincia, La Voz de Almeria, 25 Aug. 2013.
73 Chad Elias. “Landscae Photography’s ‘New Humanism,’” Humanism, Either/And, [n.d].
74 Javier Martin-Arroyo and Nacho Sanchez, “De los Invernaderos al Fondo del Mar: la Plaga del Plástico Agricola en Almeria,” Clima y Medio Ambiente, El País, 4 Sep. 2021.
75 “Plastic is Everywhere: in Water, Air and Soil,” Plastic Problem, Plastic Soup Foundation, [n.d].
76 Nacho Sanchez, “Los Plasticos de la Agricultura inundan Almeria,” Clima y Medio Ambiente, El País, 6 Nov. 2020.
77 “Fields of Plastics: The Growing Problem of Agriplastics.” Report. Environmental Investigation Agency. 6 Nov. 2018.
78 “Fields of Plastics: The Growing Problem of Agriplastics.”
79 Zacharias Steinmetz et al., “Plastic Mulching in Agriculture. Trading Short-Term Agronomic Benefits for Long-Term Soil Degradation?” Science of the Total Environment, Vol. 550 (2016): 690-705.
80 Zacharias Steinmetz et al., “Plastic Mulching in Agriculture. Trading Short-Term Agronomic Benefits for Long-Term Soil Degradation?” 695-698.
81 Zacharias Steinmetz et al., “Plastic Mulching in Agriculture. Trading Short-Term Agronomic Benefits for Long-Term Soil Degradation?” 696-698.
82 Anderson Abel de Souza Machado et al., “Microplastics Can Change Soil Properties and Affect Plant Performance,” Environmental Science and Technology, Vol. 53.10 (2019): 6044-6052.
83 Charlie Ryrlie, Soil (Gaia Organic Basics: London, 2001) 4.
84 Jayashankar Telangana, “Microplastics in Food Chain,” Publication, State Agricultural University, Research Gate, 19 Jun. 2019.
85 Telangana, “Microplastics in Food Chain.”
86 “Plastic and Toxic Colonialism: Prof. Alice Mah.”
87 Corinne Silva, “Badlands 2008-2011,” Badlands, Corinne Silva, [n.d].
88 Chad, “ Landscae Photography’s ‘New Humanism.’”
89 Silva, “Badlands 2008-2011.”
90 Chad, “ Landscae Photography’s ‘New Humanism.’”
91 Tod Hartman, “States, Markets, and Other Unexceptional Communities: Informal Romanian Labour in a Spanish Agricultural Zone,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol. 14.3 (2008): 498.
92 Heather Davis, Plastic Matter, (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2022) 3.
93 Davis, Plastic Matter, 1.
94 Max Liboiron, Pollution is Colonialism, (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2021) 16.
95 Scovell, “Responses: Keith Arnatt’S A.O.N.B (1982-1984)”
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Images References:
Figure 1: Keith Arnatt. A.O.N.B (1982-85). 1982-85. Photograph, Gelatine Silver Print on Paper. Keith Arnatt Estate. http://www.keitharnattestate.com/works/w51.html
Figure 2: Keith Arnatt. Miss Grace’s Lane. 1986-87. Photograph, C-print on Paper. 25.4 x 20.2 cm. Tate. https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/arnatt-miss-graces-lane-t13154
Figure 3: Corinne Silva. Temporary Settlement I. 2008-11. Photograph, C-Print on Paper. 101 X 81 cm. Photomonitor. https://photomonitor.co.uk/portfolio/badlands/