LOCATION: Outdoor Exhibition at City Beach Lagunen. MAP
Lord Howe Island, a remote location between Australia and New Zealand, is home to one of the largest colonies of Flesh-Footed Shearwater seabirds. Plastic mistaken for food is foraged at sea by the parent Shearwaters and fed to their fledgling chicks, causing starvation and ultimately death.
Barker joined scientists on Lord Howe Island in April 2019 to record when the chicks leave their burrows and migrate to the Sea of Japan to begin their new life. Instead the birds were found dying on the shoreline, unable to fly because of the weight of plastic in their stomachs.
The photographs contrast the dying birds with the stunningly beautiful environment of Lord Howe Island. The series of images forms a narrative of their lifespan, with the final image showing the actual plastic within the bird, a subtle timeline that represents the increasing toxicity of plastic pollution harboured within.
The abbreviation for the Flesh-Footed Shearwater, FFSH, has been changed to FFS (For F***s Sake), a conscious decision to try to reach new audiences. It reflects Barker’s ongoing motivation to represent the issue of marine plastic pollution and call to action.
Still – not moving or making a sound, undisturbed by wind, sound or current.
Mandy Barker is an international award-winning photographer whose work involv-ing marine plastic debris has received global recognition. Barker has taken part in key scientific expeditions to some of the most remote places on the planet. Her work has been published in over 50 different countries and has been exhibited world wide. in-cluding at MoMA – The Museum of Modern Art, the United Nations Headquarters in New York, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and Fotografiska in Stockholm.
Barker participated in the Landskrona Foto Festival in 2017 and she now returns to present new work. Barker was shortlisted for the Prix Pictet, the world’s leading pho-tography award for sustainability, and last year was recognised with the Internation-al Understanding Through Photography Award by The Photographic Society of America.