DESCRIPTION
In this ongoing photo series, I have been gathering litter, rubbish and pollutants from my local urban creek and making them into garments. Then I photograph them being worn back in the original creek environment. So far I have made dresses from polyethylene plastic bags, HDPE bottles, aluminium cans, and invasive weeds including prickly pear and common reeds.
These images are an attempt to sustain a visual conversation around the issues of environmental degredation and the legacy of ecological destruction we are leaving our children and the following generations. And to sit with and engage somatically with ecological trouble and my own eco-anxiety.
Physically touching and even clothing my body, my children’s bodies, or my friends’ bodies in this contaminated waste, rather than looking at it from afar, is quite uncomfortable. It goes against our instincts to distance ourselves from pollutants of any kind. However, I think it also draws attention to the fraught connection between us and the land, and the fact that we can’t distance ourselves forever. It’s already caught up with us.
AUTHOR
Daisy Noyes (born 1980, New York) is an award-winning photographer based in Melbourne, Australia, and Massachusetts, USA. She studied photography at Sarah Lawrence College in New York and performance at The University of New South Wales in Sydney. Her artistic practice exists in the liminal space between photography and performance, where the images function as visual records of fleeting acts and narrative fragments. Women, identity, family, embodiment, seasonality, and the fraught connection between humans and the natural world have been the subjects of her work.
Daisy’s photographs have been exhibited at the International Center for Photography in New York, FORMAT Festival in the UK, the Ballarat International Foto Biennale in Australia, Lishui Photography Festival in China, Auckland Festival of Photography, and Noir Gallery in Melbourne. Recent published work includes Photo Collective Magazine, JANE by The Grey Attic, GALAH press, Photographer’s Companion China, The Guardian US Edition, The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.
Awards:
2020 LensCulture Critics’ Choice Award
2020 Finalist, Australian Photography Awards, portrait category
2021 Finalist, Documentary Family Awards, Environmental Portrait Category
2021 Semi-finalist, Head On Photo Awards, Portrait Category
2021 Winner, Expert Recommended Photographer’s Award, Lishui Festival of Photography
2022 Shortlist, Photobook Award, Australian Photography Awards, Digital
