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THE BEAUTY OF GARBAGE_ART OF PHOTOGRAPHY MEETS ENVIRONMENTALISM
Abstract
Artists and university professors face an increasingly complex environment. There is access to abundance of information and the AI revolution helps everyone to deliver more detailed and structured knowledge. This is an opportunity to try new methods and novel combinations in the artistic and learning processes and use more diverse ideas and methods. We want to highlight the development in recent years in our personal life in Iceland in the use of photography in this context. It all started in the Covid-19 pandemic crisis with lockout and exile at home. The parents of the university professor found old black & white film negatives from his youth. This ignited a lost hobby in the author who found his old passion again. He had never processed most of these photos so this was now promptly scanned into digital form. This opened a new world of memories and extreme nostalgia. These photos were around 50 years old, so the first idea was to duplicate some of the scenes and compositions in the same locations and even with the original people as possible. This idea is in progress and an exhibition is planned in the next 2-3 years when this project has produced enough material with good enough duplicates. Another idea is a work in progress. The common trend in photography is to either focus on the technical perfection or the artistic aesthetics of the composition. These two can of course be combined in great work of art. The title of this abstract is to play with these opposite themes of art and perfection. The garbage is a role model for imperfection and the circular economy is very methodical and scientific in the recycling processes. The author has been going around in circles around the island of Iceland to get beautiful photographs of garbage in all diverse forms and colours. The plan is to open an exhibition soon with this theme and collection of garbage photos. In the future it is on the plan case to utilize old and new photographs in the teaching with pre-recorded audio and/or YouTube -like lectures with both audio and visual appearance. The focus is to connect personal art to lectures in practice. The author likes this teaching method and adds passion and enthusiasm to the lecture recording sessions. Personal photographs are rare in higher education in lecture work but can add a powerful dimension the lectures and will probably increase interest from the students. But personally made photographs used in university lectures are interesting to explore. This is part of the author’s journey to identify himself as a photographer, an artist.
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