Photographer Kim Preston (b. 1979, Australia) produced a series of photographs to express her concern about the ‘trash vortex’ of the North Pacific Ocean as part of a school assignment, and was immediately picked up by several online publications, both of photographic and environmental interest.  We found them on GUP Magazine. 

Preston is interviewd about the project and also her approach of making the plastic beautiful and rather artistically alluring. 

What prompted you to create this series? It wasn’t originally part of a commercial assignment, correct?

The series was actually a school assignment, where we had to create a pretend client (in this case Greenpeace) and a pretend brief, in the type of industry we’d like to work in. I call it commercial, because it’s Commercial-ish work, but there is no actual client. Just to be clear though, the concept is mine. 

I only heard about the trash vortex a few years ago, and was both shocked by the scale of the issue, and saddened by how seemingly little is being done to help fix the problem. I wanted to create images that would make people think about the issue more deeply than they might have done had I used more shocking scare tactic type images. In some ways, I think we will have to start seeing beauty within the environmental destruction of our planet, because we certainly seem to be hell bent on making sure there is no natural beauty left untouched by our wastefulness.

More reading: Researchers a Welcome Crowd in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Lifeforms Fighting To Breathe In the World’s Greatest Rubbish Dump

Europe Bids Adieu to Bubbly Water in Plastic Bottles