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Dismantlement of Nature

By Cassie Strong

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Introduction

Dismantlement of Nature portrays a single street in a small town. While current studies suggest that littering is on the decrease,

this single road says otherwise. When we were asked to think about a social issue that was dear to us, it was tough for me to find one

that I thought I might be able to capture. It was an overcast day when I did my normal “healthy living” jog down this desolate street.

On countless times before, I’ve passed by quickly, missing tiny specks of trash, but on this particular run I started to notice all of the

trash. I ran down the street and back, only to realize I have stumbled upon my social issue: littering. The more I travel down this road,

the angrier I get. I can’t fathom how humans can bestow their trash upon a street that holds such beauty and character. These photos

show the carelessness of humans and the struggle of nature to survive. From a far, as a traveler like I once was, the road appears as

any other road. There are ridges and bumps, potholes and plants, trees that have fallen, trees that still stand, and even a small creek

that runs under the road. However, when you stop and observe this half a mile of a road, just like any other picture, there is more than

meets the eye. Each picture represents a different type of class, a different instance of a human’s carelessness. Together, these pictures

represent the issue of littering in a small town and the ugliness it plagues to nature.

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The Photo Analysis

In this image, I wanted to

portray the cup (litter) as it was

parallel to the street. One of the main

composition rules is to use the white

space to draw the audience into your

picture. While the sky is usually the

only white space portrayed, I also

used the sand on the side of the road

as white space. It was bright enough

to draw the audiences eye towards the

object of focus: the red solo cup. As

Hall said, the idea of a center is

“imortant to many human activities

and to much human thinking” as it is

seen to “prevail over that which

surrounds it” (Hall, p. 98). The red

solo cup appears to be in the center,

and it made even more prominment by

it being the only thing colored in this

picture. By using these editing skills,

I’m creating contrast on the red solo

cup making it a focul thinking point

for the audience. This tactic also

helped me use another composition

tool, which was the balancing of the

elements. While the red solo cup is the

main focus of this photograph, the

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sand (though it wasn’t actually sand) is also another aspect of the picture, as well as the road itself, which is made apparent by the

simple prescence of it all, which is “the way in which different elements in avisual compostion draw attention to, or away from,

themselves” (Hall, p. 90).Even though the red solo cup is the main focus, the other elements in the photograph work together to create

a meaningful point. I wanted to show the trash as it was on the road, while still showing the road from a far and the lonliness it

portrays. In most of my photographs, including this one, I kept in mind the idea of synecdoche. As Hall once mentioned, synechdoche

is when a part of something represents the whole (Hall, p. 58). In this photograph, a single piece of trash represents one careless

person who decided to litter, which then ties into society as a whole and how we cannot seem to overcome this tiring issue of littering.

By relating a single piece of trash to a whole idea, it seems to make a much bigger impact as opposed to explaining the whole issue at

hand.

Along with the balancing of the elements, I also used the rule of thirds to create this photograph. The photograph shows the

road, the sand, and the side of the road with the debris on it. These thirds also all run diaognally paralell, which is another rule of

composition. These lines, and the lines in the debris, all work together to trace the audiences eye back to the focus point: the red solo

cup. When taking most of my pictures, I think I may have unknowing used this rules out of habit. Together, these rules work together

to draw the audience into the focul point of the picture while still making it part of the big picture also (as in, you audience see’s the

red cup but then see’s the street and surrounding areas with the red solo cup).

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The Compostion Analysis

As L.W. Hine mentioned pictures are “interpreations of social ideals and situations” as they exhibit problems and activities of

life that have human appeal (p. 110-111). I used my iPhone to capture my digital photographs as I felt it interwined with the topic of

littering. As more and more people become enriched into social media via their iPhones and iPads, certain issues tend to fall away and

get hidden. As Kelly mentioned, photography is “a language form within definitive cultural parameters” and I think that the iPhone

clearly demonstrates the cultural of our current society in regards to the topic of littering (p. 410). As people become tuned in to

technology, they become tuned out to the issue of littering. Weston said that photography reveals the nature of the world that we live

in, which I thought would be more clear if I used the camrea on my iPhone as it takes pictures much faster than my digital camera or a

film camera (p. 175). On my iPhone, I used the camera as it was, but I also used Hipstamatic. I used Hipstamtic because it gave many

different filtering options which gave the digital photograph an authentic and deviated feeling. I wanted these pictures to have a dark

tint and ripped edges as I thought this would make it more resmebling of trash itself. Stigeltz even said that “even poor pictures are

attarctive,” which is what I had in mind when I decided to use these filters (p.117). I think when pictures appear as “poor” we tend to

view them in a different, more thoughtful way. As humans in a fast paced society, darker, filtered, pictures tend to grab our attention

more and probe us at deeper meaning.

Weston said that photography is an “instanteous process of recording” (p. 171). I spent a few half hours constantly recording

these digital photographs. When I sat down to sort through them, I had over one hundred pictures. It was easy, at first, to elimate

pictures I found no use in. When I first started narrowing them down, I looked for deeper meaning in each picture. If there were a

bunch of clear shots in a row followed by a blurry one, I’d stare at it for a while and think about what that could mean. When I got to

around thirty pictures, it become much more difficult to narrow down the pictures. I started looking at the composition and semiotics

in each picture and went from there.

There are a few pictures I want to explain a little further. I took many shots and played around with the picture that has the sign

that says “no littering”. I found this sign to be compelling, because as the audience views on, there’s much irony in the sign. As Sean

Hall says “signs are amazing diverse. They include gestures, facial expressions, speech disorders, slogans, graffiti, road signs,

commercials, medical symptoms, photography, design, landscape…etc” (p. 5). While Hall is talking about signs as symbols, he’s

including actualy road signs in this category. Even this simple sign that states a law is completely diverse as it relates to the landscape

around it. I ended up chosing that picture because it captured fog in the background which I felt added a nice touch. It was like the

irony was creeping in on the road that day. Another important picture to look at is my deer photograph. When I stumbled upon this

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deer, I literally screamed out loud. It was an eery day and there was no one around. My voice echoed and I stumbled backwards

starring at the deer. I was faced with a real ethical dilemma in my head (to photograph or not to photograph). When I started debating

this matter in my head, I noticed that the deer was surrounded by trash, so alas, I started photographing it. I viewed this deer as one

part of a family, which was a part of the ecosystem in which we (as a society) live. As Hall mentions, this part/whole relationship is

referred to as synecodche (p. 58). I also found this photograph very ironic, as there are many “opposite things” in existence (Hall, p.

60). For instance, the dead deer is surrounded by trash. This photograph is not suggesting that the trash is what killed this specific

deer, but I think it is making the connection that’s what can kill the general environment and animals that exist within it, which is an

exmaple of metonymy, as one thing is represented by another (Hall, p.56).

These photos, if viewed seperately, each represent a piece of the environment that has been tantlizzed by trash. However, if

you view the photographs as a whole, as an essay, they represent the failure of society to face a social issue that has been place on the

back burner. These photographs express a real life issue and threat to our ecosystem and the animals that inhabit it.

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References

Hall, S. (2007). This Means This, This Means That (2nd ed.). Great Britain: Laurence King

Publishing.

Hine, L.W. (1909). Social photography. In A. Trachetenberg (Ed.), Classic Essays on Photography (pp. 109 – 113). Leete’s

Island Books: New Haven, CT. [pdf]

Kelly, A. (1979, 2003). Self image. In A. Wells (Ed.), The photography reader (pp. 410 – 416). New York, NY: Routledge.

[PDF]

Stieglitz, A. (1899). Pictorial photography. In A. Trachetenberg (Ed.), Classic Essays on Photography (pp. 115 – 123). Leete’s

Island Books: New Haven, CT. [pdf]

Weston, E. (1969). Seeing photographically. In A. Trachetenberg (Ed.), Classic Essays on Photography (pp. 169 – 175).

Leete’s Island Books: New Haven, CT. [pdf]