The Yamuna is among the most polluted rivers in India, and its pollution has come to be represented through a fairly fixed set of images: froth, garbage, dark water. “Plastic Typology” departs from this repetitive imagery. Polybags collected from the riverbanks are compressed into the format of a 4×5 inch sheet film, then translated into silver gelatin prints using an enlarger. The waste itself becomes the negative: its creases, folds, and translucencies stand in for the photographic emulsion’s tonal range. What results is not a picture of plastic pollution, but plastic pollution rendered directly as image, bypassing the camera’s claim to objectivity. The work, rather than cataloguing the river’s waste from a distance allows the material to author its own representation.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Kush Kukreja (b.1994) is a visual artist born and based in Delhi, India. He holds a Master’s degree in Photography Design from the National Institute of Design, Gandhinagar, and completed an exchange at the HGB, Leipzig.
