honorable mention
Lars Klingenberg germany
title
Drei Milliarden
Probably no other object is as symbolic of the global plastic crisis as the plastic bag: it is the epitome of our throwaway society, stands for global pollution, excessive waste and excessive consumption.
From 01.01.2022, it is prohibited in Germany to put classic plastic bags on the market. However, particularly lightweight plastic carrier bags, so-called shirt bags, are exempt from the ban. In Germany alone, around three billion (Drei Miliarden) of these bags are consumed every year.
Hamburg-based photographer and artistic activist Lars Klingenberg has been collecting fully functional shirt bags on the street since 2014. All the bags collected, by now tens of hundreds, lay on the street like garbage.
Sculptural, photographic images were created from these bags, which - combined with compact information in the form of quotes about plastic and plastic waste - serve to educate and clarify the global plastic problem.
The work "Drei Milliarden" (2019-2022) plays with the visual codes and expectations of the social media platform Instagram and, with the help of "countless" iterations of the ready-mades, illustrates our mostly ill-considered, consumption-oriented ways of acting and the resulting long-term consequences for the environment. "Drei Milliarden" reflects the current state of knowledge on the subject of plastic with supplementary quotes from online articles in major newspapers and websites of authorities and environmental organizations.
"Drei Milliarden": 300 bags in 300 days & quotes about plastic and plastic waste from 11 topics at www.instagram.com/drei_milliarden/
In 2013 Lars Klingenberg started to work on entirely independent conceptual-artistic long-term projects and creates, among other things, “Social & Political Sculptures of the Metropolis”. Using photographic tools and iterations (partly from materials found or collected on the street), to reflect social states and poverty in Germany. The depictions are based on a veristic and progressive "Neue Sachlichkeit" way of working and thinking.
Driven by the advancing social inequality in German society, escalating consumerism and the Anthropocene, Lars Klingenberg is working on a alternative draft to the representations, aesthetic distortions and reality shifts in contemporary documentary photography that have been shaped since the 1990s by neoliberalism and an educated bourgeois worldview. "Soziale Sachlichkeit" (Social Objectivity) is a return to the "clear objectivity photography" that emerged in the 1920s, thematically focused on socio-politically relevant and socially critical content.
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entry description
Plastic has invaded our entire living environment: In the human body, in our food, in animals, the landscape, air, lakes, rivers and the oceans. Along with the climate crisis, the plastic crisis is one of the biggest problems of our time.Probably no other object is as symbolic of the global plastic crisis as the plastic bag: it is the epitome of our throwaway society, stands for global pollution, excessive waste and excessive consumption.
From 01.01.2022, it is prohibited in Germany to put classic plastic bags on the market. However, particularly lightweight plastic carrier bags, so-called shirt bags, are exempt from the ban. In Germany alone, around three billion (Drei Miliarden) of these bags are consumed every year.
Hamburg-based photographer and artistic activist Lars Klingenberg has been collecting fully functional shirt bags on the street since 2014. All the bags collected, by now tens of hundreds, lay on the street like garbage.
Sculptural, photographic images were created from these bags, which - combined with compact information in the form of quotes about plastic and plastic waste - serve to educate and clarify the global plastic problem.
The work "Drei Milliarden" (2019-2022) plays with the visual codes and expectations of the social media platform Instagram and, with the help of "countless" iterations of the ready-mades, illustrates our mostly ill-considered, consumption-oriented ways of acting and the resulting long-term consequences for the environment. "Drei Milliarden" reflects the current state of knowledge on the subject of plastic with supplementary quotes from online articles in major newspapers and websites of authorities and environmental organizations.
"Drei Milliarden": 300 bags in 300 days & quotes about plastic and plastic waste from 11 topics at www.instagram.com/drei_milliarden/
about the photographer
Lars Klingenberg, born 1978 in Aachen, lives and works in Hamburg, Germany.In 2013 Lars Klingenberg started to work on entirely independent conceptual-artistic long-term projects and creates, among other things, “Social & Political Sculptures of the Metropolis”. Using photographic tools and iterations (partly from materials found or collected on the street), to reflect social states and poverty in Germany. The depictions are based on a veristic and progressive "Neue Sachlichkeit" way of working and thinking.
Driven by the advancing social inequality in German society, escalating consumerism and the Anthropocene, Lars Klingenberg is working on a alternative draft to the representations, aesthetic distortions and reality shifts in contemporary documentary photography that have been shaped since the 1990s by neoliberalism and an educated bourgeois worldview. "Soziale Sachlichkeit" (Social Objectivity) is a return to the "clear objectivity photography" that emerged in the 1920s, thematically focused on socio-politically relevant and socially critical content.
back to gallery