Mandy BARKER collects marine plastic debris and transforms it into images that are both visually captivating and ecologically urgent. In collaboration with scientists and through field expeditions, she gathers waste from coastlines and arranges it in her studio to create compositions that reveal the hidden scale of ocean pollution.
In the waters off Cork Harbour, where plankton once drifted, plastic now floats. Her series Beyond Drifting: Imperfectly Known Animals (2017) reimagines a disrupted marine world, where synthetic fragments replace organic life. Presented like antique scientific plates, the images echo early naturalist studies—but the specimens are artificial, shaped by human impact. Shot on expired film, with visible flaws and grain, the photographs themselves seem contaminated, mirroring the damaged ecosystems they portray and questioning how we perceive and document nature.
