Oddities
The idea
In contrast to what is told to the public, recycling unfortunately is not capable to gain again 100% of the ressources from a product. The biggest problem is the therefore necessary 'sorting accuracy' - the 100% correct dividing and sorting of the processed ressources. It is not possible to achieve that sorting accuracy for everything that's thrown away. There always appear objects or components that can't be classified exactly or seperated from other components.
But also in our minds and perception it's not possible to achieve 100% 'sorting accuracy' - neither with our surroundings nor with our thoughts. To often there are 'oddities' of some kind, that just won't let themselves get classified precisely. No matter if it's about animal or plant species, that need definitions, sorting patterns in a library or the classification system we use for ourselves to form the impression we have about people we don't know yet.
As everyone of us surely has met such a 'sorting accuracy problem' at least once, we should make our thinking and living a little easier by just doing without this kind of stereotyped thinking and let the 'oddities' be odd.
The concept
To realise this idea, I used a natrual and as neutral as possible light to take photographs. I wanted no hard shadows that could distract the viewer's eye to bring out the forms and structures of the objects. To get a homogeneous look for all the pictures, I used the same focal length of 100 millimeters for each one. It was also an aim that there's as little depth of field as possible to let the pictures appear more 'two-dimensional' and 'flat' to bring out the forms and colours even more. That's why I took the pictures with the camera orthographic to the object being photographed.
The photographs are intended as huge posters, to get more of a 'spot the oddities' effect and to bring out the many details, colours and forms as good as possible.
Background
Photography project from the 5th semester, looked after by photographer Arno Gisinger at the University of Applied Sciences Vorarlberg, supported by the recycling company Loacker from Götzis (Austria).
Link to the projecthomepage:
http://wordpress.labs.fhv.at/recycling/2012/03/28/oddities/
Picture down below shows the article about the project in the company newsletter from Loacker.
All works © Cathrin Brachart 2012.
Please do not reproduce without the expressed written consent of Cathrin Brachart.
Please do not reproduce without the expressed written consent of Cathrin Brachart.
