Artist Mandy Barker’s at times kaleidoscopic, at times otherworldly photographic collages of plastic marine debris became a hit before she even graduated art school. She credits her technique for awakening the viewers who have been “anaesthetized to facts”.

Perhaps Mandy Barker’s photo series ‘SOUP’ needs clarification. They portray the marine waste that has captivated and appalled the artist for over two decades. Technically speaking the term ‘SOUP’ is used to describe what is an unpleasant by-product of our day-to-day plastic consumption, a toxic concoction that is swirling around in today’s oceans.

It was almost 20 years ago that Barker first began to take notice of the waste that was being washed up on the shoreline, initially she supposed it was rubbish people had left on the beach. It was only later, she says, that she realized it wasn’t coming directly from the land — but that “they [the pieces of waste] were actually coming from the sea”. To start with, it was small things that began to increasingly intermingle with the natural objects that Barker was used to collecting. She noticed small man-made objects — predominately plastic single-use items, and then she began to see larger items washed up.

“I realized it was getting really bad when I first saw a fridge-freezer and a car and a TV on the beach,”

Barker began to make connections, to ask herself how the things got there. She soon learnt, from local fisherman on the east coast of the UK, that regular dumping went on out at sea. She also understood that waste entered the sea from rivers and all this was in addition to the general littering of the beaches. Barker’s research continued her research online and in person.

As Barker pursued a career in photography she became more and more convinced that the plastic-waste issue was a serious concern and that it needed to be documented.

Soft power probably sums up her work and method best.

Unassuming in person, Barker, a mother of three, is far from the anarchic diva photographer we have come to accept when we think of an internationally recognized art photographer. She came to professional photography relatively late in life after initially having worked in graphic design. Her skill in visual communication is clearly evident in her carefully crafted work. This skill allied to her passion has helped to bring the issue of plastic pollution to the public domain, which, in turn, has brought her worldwide recognition and success. Published worldwide in magazines and journals ranging from Time to Wired, the Financial Times to the Guardian, Mandy is also the recipient of a multitude of national and international awards. Yet she baulks at the idea of being in the limelight or being celebrated. She certainly prefers to let her work speak for itself as she says “I’m not naturally one to stand on a stage and shout about it.”

“When I first started taking images of waste they were essentially documentary pictures. I just took pictures of how I found the waste on the beach in-situ — people weren’t really interested in the pictures,” she says.

“It didn’t really hold their attention for very long, so I realized that I needed to create something that had a longer lasting impact.”

How does a photographer bring our attention to what is now considered to be one of the most alarming environmental issues of the day?

As she developed her technique, Barker drew inspiration from several photographers, several of which had scaled back the background to allow the viewer to focus on the object at hand. Edward Weston’s ‘Pepper Series’ and Cornelia Parker’s feather photograms pitched objects against a black background. “I was intrigued [by] how the object took all the focus with the background essentially removed,” Barker says. Once Barker managed to remove all noise from around objects and have people focus on them, she began to seriously consider the texts that would accompany them. Here she was inspired by photographer Simon Norfolk, whose landscapes are at first attractive, however when they are combined with his captions they give a truly powerful message of what he’s trying to represent. It is the context that the captions bring that truly convey what lays behind his photographs.

Eventually, she arrived at the intricate photo collages that make up SOUP, which became her final project during her MA in Photography. ‘SOUP’ soon gained global interest. Although only a student project, the way in which she had chosen to communicate the ecological threat of marine waste seemed to resonate strongly and Barker’s work was soon published worldwide. She had managed to capture the viewers’ attention, as she had hoped for, and used the caption below to give “shocking, hard-hitting facts about the environment and marine plastic”.

The viewer may not initially be aware that the images are of trash and is far less aware of the message behind the image until drawn in. As Barker explains, “people often become anaesthetized to facts and figures and there aren’t really many visual images of this particular area”. It was always Barker’s hope her work — the visual element, along with the science and the statistics, would combine to create more of an awareness of the situation.

Now through gallery representation, fine art prints (a percentage of the sales of which she donates to charities such as ‘Plastic Free Seas’) and giving talks Mandy’s message is reaching a wider audience. Most recently she undertook new projects, one — PENALTY — involving a social media element. Footballs which had been washed on shores from Kenya to Guadeloupe and Scotland were collected and sent to her to document. The project affirmed Mandy’s belief that she was on the right path and that people were concerned and interested in the plight of the oceans. SHOAL, another recent project dealt with waste collected during Japanese Tsunami Debris Expedition in June 2012, the work here reflected time Mandy spent in the area of Fukushima seeing personal objects washed up and considering lives lost as a result of the natural disaster. Although at the time it became less about the scientific side of plastic pollution, ultimately Mandy feels the work reflects the magnitude of both the personal and scientific side of the destruction.

It is hard for Barker to know whether her work is having any real effect. However, at her exhibitions, Barker has left surveys for the visitor to fill in. The numbers show that more than 80 percent of the viewers were previously unaware of the problem of what ends up in the oceans and on the beaches, and 87 percent of respondents said that they would think more about what they bought and what they used as a result. Barker emphasizes “I don’t create artworks for artworks’ sake”.

The original version of this article was published in the printed and online magazine Twentyfour7 (2015) a stakeholder magazine for Wärtsilä.