In this unpredictable and changing world, we are all urged to take action in the face of climate change. But how can we do so when eco-anxiety permeates our consumerist culture? Large corporations and societal norms endlessly urge the populace to consume with little concern for the consequences. This fast-paced development overproduces and swiftly obsoletes commodities, filling landfills on the way. Nothing is built to last but rather to fuel the throwaway society we have created. Our current relationship with the environment is strained and unbalanced. We exploit the earth by depleting, destroying, and constraining it for our benefit, indifferent to the repercussions. This photographic series depicts the interactions between our consumerist society and the environmental damage it has caused. It explores the ways that we limit and control our world through the use of salvaged, damaged, and outdated consumer objects and flora propagated from my surroundings. In search of a more organic and sustainable method of printing photographs, this work delves further into our environmental impact and that of the photographic process. The images in this project are created from organic pigments, ecologically viable printing methods, paper recycling and moulding. All components of this work are handmade, and each cut-off, test print and research document has been recycled into new paper – a circular approach that demonstrates, on a small scale, that there are more viable ways to live.

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About
Beth Theobald is a photographic artist based in London who works with alternative processes such as Polymer Intaglio, Silkscreen, Cyanotype or Salt printing. Her practice investigates notions of materiality and the natural world, often combining the organic and the photographic through a number of crafts and printing processes.