Introduction:
Suzette Bousema considers plastic objects found at sea as relics of the future. Inspired by an archaeological approach, she set off to collect plastic from a beach along the coast of the Netherlands and document the plastic waste washed up from the ocean. In just eight hours, she collected 1,193 items (149 items per hour), amounting to 13kg of plastic. Items collected included 136 pieces of food packaging, 58 straws, 5 surfboards, a football, a doll and items dating back as far as the 1950s. She took everything back to the studio and, using a cyanotype photography technique (originally developed to make to scale contact prints of plants), she documented 500 of the objects she found. The images portray the huge amount of plastic found at sea and also highlight the organic shapes that plastic can take after spending years drifting in water. Although the forms of the objects change, they do not disappear. As Bousema says, ‘Plastic fades in colour and breaks up into tiny pieces, but it will remain forever.’

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