Sunday, March 24, 2013

Work in Progress #3








At the start of this project I wanted to focus on a medical waste incinerator in unincorporated Apopka, but the nearby landfills provided ample photographic opportunities. In essence this project is about what we abandon and the lengths we go to in order to keep it out of sight and out of mind.

The top image does the best job at conveying that idea. The first version is pretty similar to how it was taken originally. There's the barbed wire of course in the foreground, keeping everyone at a distance, and the addition of the green leaves help soften the image, just like people need to both protect themselves and present themselves as affable. The barbs are more threateningly symbolic than practical. If anyone really wanted to get in, they could. The background, relatively out of focus, appears to be an empty field, perhaps prompting the viewer to ask why exactly is this being protected by barbed wire. Underneath the mask, out of sight, lies all of our dirty little secrets. We don't want to deal with our waste, so we just cover it up and say "Do not enter, violators will be prosecuted."

In the second version, the leaves and ground were modified to appear more dead, illustrating what lies underneath. The real substance of the hill in the background is literally garbage, things that are as good as dead to us. So now, everything is dead -substance and facade.

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