A New Perspective, Chloe Schmit, 2020
My relationship with plastic is complicated. I love plastic things, like toys and plastic jewelry or accessories, but I only buy things that I really like, to be environmentally friendly. My image is about the problem of wanting to do more for the environment but feeling powerless as to how to make a difference. Advertisements in magazines that use cluttered plastic imagery inspired my image’s appearance. I keep a drawer full of things that would have otherwise been thrown away and use them for art projects, many of which are plastic objects. To compose my photo, I pulled out my junk drawer, removed all the non-plastic items and photographed the plastic ones. The items surrounding the drawer are plastic things taken from my house’s recycling bin. This shows how small my drawer of stuff is compared to all the trash surrounding it and taking over the room.