My Project Ideas (#4) - The Trace
For this project, I am interested in taking a more environmental approach. As the project was described to the class, I began to imagine the traces that every human being unknowingly leaves behind. I then started looking at Julian Montague’s photos of shopping carts found in the natural environment. These inspired to focus on consumption and realized that the best way to do that was to focus on food and how it is treated at Beloit.
The idea of “the trace” will be seen in two different ways in my series of photographs. I will be documenting, through my photographs, all of the food that people leave behind. I will be documenting the traces that they obliviously leave behind. In addition, I will be following the various stages that the unwanted food goes through. I will be documenting the food once the consumer decides that they no longer want it and follow it to its end.
My goal is to help the students of Beloit understand the impact their waste has on the environment. I believe that most people stop thinking about their food and what happens to it once they’ve decided that they are done eating it. We are all very concerned about food preparation and how food is obtained/made, but not enough people think about what happens to the food when they decide to be done with it. At Beloit College, it, for the most part, ends up being shipped off to an enormous landfill. I want to spread awareness about this, and hope that my photos are effective.
