Portrait nominee

In this photo series we photographed the top 10 most important recyclable materials in an artistic way. To show the beauty of waste. In these 3 images you see the 'paper' recyclable materials: Mixed paper, Magazines and Newspapers.

Recycling is one of the best ways for us to have a positive impact on the world in which we live. Recycling is important to both the natural environment and us. We must act fast as the amount of waste we create is increasing all the time.

We came up with and created the complete images ourselves. This means that we've manually made 1,000 beads of used magazines for the necklace. We've folded 120 pyramids out of mixed paper. And we've rolled 1,000 arrows from old newspapers.

We use photoshop only to strengthen the image, not to manipulate it.

We are Jacqueline Aardenburg and Rosanne de Vries and together we are photographic duo Aardenburg & De Vries. During our photography studies at the Fotovakschool of Amsterdam we met and decided to continue together.

With backgrounds in styling, design and commercial imagery, our works combine aspiration and realisation – photographs that are both surreal and believable. Our images always have some absurdness or surrealness in it. We create playful and dynamic compositions that build on reality with a minimum of post-production enhancement. So, what you see is real.