Plastic Utopia

Technique: photography.
Exhibition available in several formats.

“It started with annoyance. The tree in front of my house is the first piece of nature I encounter when I leave my house, and every day I saw trash spontaneously accumulating underneath it. I wondered why.”

For three years, every day, Henri Blommers took a photo in exactly the same place (Wagenaarstraat series, named after the street where the artist lives): this is the origin of his fascination with all the objects we get rid of, sometimes without thinking about it, and, one thing leading to another, the starting point of the Plastic Utopia series.

“Plastic ends up in nature, but how long will it stay there? How will it decompose? Will our nature be flexible enough to handle this enormous flow of debris?” These are the questions Henri Blommers asked himself when he decided to photograph plastics abandoned in nature. By adding color casts to his images, he creates almost unreal worlds of disturbing beauty.

For Henri Blommers, the Plastic Utopia series is a way of looking to the future: “I hope that nature can absorb our consumption. We buy a croissant and eat it in a few minutes, but the plastic bag that wrapped it might last a thousand years. If you look closely, you can see plastic everywhere. You can see it especially in the layers of sand in the dunes. (…) I think consumers should pay more attention to their waste, but I also think the packaging industry, supermarkets, and the government play a role in this. We are society, and we can improve and adapt the world. We often think it’s the government, but we can also do it ourselves.”