Wednesday, November 4, 2009

entering the belly of the beast


photo by Chris Jordan who has a Message from the Gyre.
Jordan, an artist whose work I cover in my Consumer Culture class to show the effects of our everyday practices, has recently gone to the plastic gyre I told you about before and which is one of the horrors that was swirling in my mind when I wrote my Garbage Poem.

photo by Chris Jordan.
"his photographs portray the actual stomach contents of the baby birds and that the plastic was not 'moved, placed, manipulated, arranged, or altered in any way'."

4 comments:

marja-leena said...

How very awful, so vivid and beyond what can be imagined, even reading about it!

Merche Pallarés said...

How terrible!! By the way, today I posted your Garbage Poem and translation into Spanish in my blog. However, it wasn't posted as of today, it's further down (Oct. 27th). I explain it in an extra I wrote today. By the way, "computers" in Castillian Spanish is "ordenadores" but in South American Spanish is "computadoras". Now that I think about it I think I'll go back and put the two words so that everyone understands... Hugs, M.

Anonymous said...

David Suzuki posted similar pics and blog a few days ago. My heart is broken for our sacred mother earth and her precious cargo. It is so hard for me to understand how humans cannot respect, love and care for thier home? This is a visual the average person can understand...what about the unseen cell deformaties and mutations (cancers) brought on by environmental pollution.

northshorewoman said...

ML, aren't Chris Jordan's photos of the dead birds both aesthetically beautiful and horrifyingly true of us?

MP, thank you so much! I am honoured that you took the time (your precious time) to translate my poem. I will post it on my blog as I am thrilled to see a Spanish language version of my poem! I remember when I was in Mexico there were many differences in the Spanish words for things...which sometimes were quite humorous to those who know the language(s) well.

Anonymous, thank you for the Suzuki link. I will go to his site to read what he has to say; I admire his work greatly. I too share the incredulity of how we have damaged and continue to damage our sacred Mother Earth. Is nothing sacred? The answer, unfortunately, is no for some people and corporations and governments. And it is true what you say that these visual images make the damage crystal clear to stare us in the face, but what of the minute and hidden? I am sure there are so many deaths and disappearances happening because of environmental pollution, yet which we are unaware of as we go about our days.