Zelda Zinn

Perpetual Plastic

2018 - ongoing

For most of the last decade, I have been working with ephemera on its way to the recycle bin. I have used packing bubbles, security envelopes, shredded paper and magazines, backdrop paper, and, most recently, plastic shopping bags.

Whereas many of the goods were easily recyclable, the plastic bags are not. Bright, shiny and alluring, they are dangerous to wildlife. The big stores have their own bags, touting their brands as they are carried or blown about. A long-term solution to a short-term problem, they take hundreds of years to decompose.

I wanted to approach this issue through visual appeal. Seductive forms draw viewers in, engaging them to decipher meaning, as we are hard-wired to do. This work continues my longtime obsession with the meaning and function of photographs, the presentation of information, and the nature of representation.