Flotsam & Jetsam

Bermuda’s shores shape this work. I collect ocean plastics and photograph them as still lives; transforming debris into quiet portraits of beauty and consequence. Each image asks what our discarded objects reveal about the future we are creating.

My ocean plastic photographs begin on the shoreline of Bermuda, where I collect fragments of discarded buoys, nets, bottles, toys, and anonymous shards of domestic life that have travelled across oceans before settling on our reefs and beaches. Bermuda sits at the convergence of powerful Atlantic currents; what washes ashore is both local and global, intimate and planetary. Each piece I gather carries a history of consumption, loss, and drift.

This body of work evolves from my earlier project, Flotsam and Jetsam: The Cost of Modern Living, first exhibited at the Bermuda National Gallery. In that series, I examined the seductive beauty of plastic debris while confronting its environmental and cultural implications. The images were lush, almost painterly, inviting viewers in before revealing the uncomfortable truth of their subject matter. The tension between allure and alarm remains central to my practice.

In these photographs, plastic is isolated, elevated, and meticulously composed. Removed from the chaos of the shoreline, it becomes sculptural—an artifact of our era. I am interested in the material itself: its resilience, its artificial color, its refusal to decompose. By transforming waste into portraiture, I ask viewers to consider these objects not as disposable, but as enduring witnesses to our habits.

The ocean connects us all. The plastics that arrive in Bermuda do not belong solely to us; they are the residue of a global system. Through this work, I seek to hold that system up to the light—revealing both its beauty and its cost.