Waste comes to life in the art of Antoine Repessé

Antoine, photographer for the environment

The homonymous page of his website opens with two legs in black tights sprouting from a dumpster full of colored rubbish : yes, the art of photography acquires new expressions in the hands of the photographer Antoine Repessé, which are often sadly part of the living everyday and the reality in which we are immersed.

Born in Lille, northern France, born in 1979, Antoine began his training as a self-taught, to then work for well-known and less known names, and then pursue a career as a freelance that led him to learn about the "other" without masks, the relations between human beings, the distance that still separates peoples.

Thanks to India, Romania and travels in Mali, Antoine collects what it has sown, bringing visual memories and realities between the teeth of the rake that struggle to take off and come away: they are the remains, the colored plastics, the waste of everything what is consumed.

If you think that the old India, just to give an example, called the first western tourists "plastics", you can understand everything: in the country the unrestrained use of plastic was also imported, and the blue bags of Indian snacks and fruit that line the banks of the ditches are still chewed for long hours by the sacred cows that walk in search of food for the poor roads of the east.

Garbage shots: the 365 Unpacked project

But talking about garbage means, with Antoine Repessé, telling the story of Western waste, as it would be if they weren't thrown away.

It means talking about his latest work, "365 Unpacked", which has to do with the daily production of garbage, a project that comes to life between reality and image a few years ago.

Yes, because, in fact, Antoine's idea has been to keep personal recyclable waste for four years, to then carry out the aforementioned photo shoot.

Plastic bottles, newspapers, milk bottles, packets of cigarettes, frozen packs, rolls of toilet paper : thousands of untidy numbers of remains that take place in your apartment from 2011.

As the artist himself says, we wanted to give a graphic effect to the garbage, an aesthetic dimension. Something perfect and "in its place" on one side, but also that at the same time evoked something disturbing .

The article starts from the Bustle website, to then spread in a short time also via social networks and reach the main Italian newspapers. One can admire the series of shots of "people surrounded by four years of garbage" on the photographer's site.

The viral goal of well-being for the planet

As stated by Bustle the final objective of the project is, first of all, to show us unequivocally how much garbage we generate only in our daily life; secondly, it reminds us that if we just take the time to recycle in the right way, to make ecology and not to waste, by buying products in an informed way, we can still do something really positive for the well-being of the planet.