DIT Photography Graduates 2012

Caroline McNally, Earth is Room Enough

Both the installation Earth is Room Enough and the accompanying book Please Recycle address issues of consumerism and waste in contemporary society. Earth is Room Enough examines our culture of consumption through documentation of a site which is integral but background to our daily existence: the landfill. These unusual landscapes, with tens of feet of rubbish hidden from view, act as a metaphor for how our society seeks to bury our problems and avoid addressing the deeper costs of the way we live. The colour alterations, inspired by science-fiction representations of dystopian futures (in particular HG Wells, The Time Machine), seek to augment the unfamiliarity of these sites and underscore the degree to which western consumers are estranged from the innumerable and immensely destructive repercussions our consumption has at both ends of the production-disposal stream.

Please Recycle is a stocktaking of all the belongings of the artist and her family. Through the process of photographing and cataloguing over 6,000 personal possessions, the artist reflected on their own habits of consumption and contemplates the challenge of living a life less materially-based.