Sunken Dreams

Free man, you will always cherish the sea!

The sea is your mirror; you contemplate your soul

In the infinite unrolling of its billows;

Your mind is an abyss that is no less bitter.

You like to plunge into the bosom of your image;

You embrace it with eyes and arms, and your heart

Is distracted at times from its own clamoring

By the sound of this plaint, wild and untamable.

Both of you are gloomy and reticent:

Man, no one has sounded the depths of your being;

O Sea, no person knows your most hidden riches,

So zealously do you keep your secrets!

Yet for countless ages you have fought each other

Without pity, without remorse,

So fiercely do you love carnage and death,

O eternal fighters, implacable brothers!

Poem: Man and the Sea – by Charles Baudelaire

Photos brought to pass in collaboration with Chris Gilbert.  

Ophelia

I cannot rest, I cannot rest

In straight and shiny wood,

My woven hands upon my breast–

The dead are all so good!

Ophelia by John Everett Millais

The earth is cool across their eyes;

They lie there quietly.

But I am neither old nor wise;

They do not welcome me.

Where never I walked alone before,

I wander in the weeds;

And people scream and bar the door,

And rattle at their beads.

We cannot rest, we never rest

Within a narrow bed

Who still must love the living best–

Who hate the pompous dead!

Ophelia by Alexandre Cabanel

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Words from The White Lady by Dorothy Parker

Barbies Don’t Grow on Trees

Inspired by the Prix Pictet photography competitions’ theme of consumption this year I set about creating an installation of my own. The Barbie doll is the perfect metaphor for the consumerist society we live in, not only is it synonymous with our pursuit of physical and material perfection but it signifies consumption on so many levels. One Barbie doll is sold every three seconds somewhere in the world and over 1 Billion dolls have been produced and sold worldwide since 1959. Making the Barbie doll an emblem of global capitalism with its disciples being the biggest guilt free mass consumers of all – children. Children use and dispose of goods on a massive scale with complete ignorance of the consequences. The toy of the moment is quickly replaced by the new flavour of the month and simply disregarded in favour of the next. This conspicuous consumption cycle is becoming more and more rapid and the plastic just keeps piling up. A Barbie doll is made out of ABS plastic and the head is made from soft PVC plastic and therefore doesn’t biodegrade. So all of these billions of Barbies already sold are still here and yet more still being produced daily. I want to illustrate issues of environmental sustainability through this installation and as I continue to photograph the tree through the seasons one can reflect on the changeability of nature and the permanence of plastic.   As I set about on my quest to fill the tree with Barbies, I had no idea how easy it would be to amass these dolls. It took me only 2 weeks of scouring car boot sales to collect 72 unloved and unwanted dolls. Now looking back, going to a car boot sale was actually ironic as they are an unintentional sustainability practice, which recycles and extends the life cycle of products. Prix Pictet is at the V&A until the 14^th June