Single Use Plastic
A photo series about microplastics transforming a woman’s body into a plastics garden.
Microplastics are everywhere. They’re in our tissues and organs, our blood, saliva, breast milk, lungs, placentas and liver. They’re in the air we breathe and the soil that grows our food. They’re in our tap and bottled water, table salt, honey and produce. They’re in the ocean in surface waters to coral reefs to the deep ocean floor to seafood and fish.
No one knows what the long term effects are. No one knows what they will do to our body.
I imagine it could get to the point where there’s so much plastic in our bodies that they take it over and turn our bodies into an incubator. A plastic playground, where plastic items spontaneously sprout up from the human body.
The plastic effects and makeup was done by the extremely talented Special Effects Makeup artist Gabriella Paredes. I worked with Gabriella on the Horrified B-Movie Victims photo series so we had a great working relationship before diving into this project. We had a fun time brainstorming about what and where the plastic items should be on the model. A couple trips to the Dollar Store ensued where we bought a bunch of plastic crap: kids toys, kitchen items and cleaning items, straws, hangers, bottles and other stuff.
Gabriella took all the plastic items, cut them up and got them ready to be placed on the model on the day of the shoot. She made the incredible wig out of straws and that the final straw (pun very much intended) to complete the look.
Check out my other photo series here.