Of Excess and Essential

Everything we bought, used, and discarded over few days, laid bare in a single frame alongside the world it is costing. Of Excess and Essential is our reckoning with the climate and environmental crisis, and an invitation to begin yours.

Project Narrative:

We buy. We use. We discard. And we do it again. Of Excess and Essential is a personal reckoning with that cycle. Cacciari argued that distinct, irreducible ways of living must resist being absorbed into a single, homogenizing logic. This series applies that argument to consumption itself, to the desires and habits that capitalism produces and that we rarely stop to question. By cataloging every item we bought, used, and discarded over several days, we try to step outside that logic long enough to see it clearly. Each object in the frame is our own complicity made visible. Our consumption is society's consumption. Society's consumption is the climate crisis made visible. And in recording it, we open a space for viewers to begin their own reckoning.

How would we consume differently if we knew the true lifecycle of every object and its impact on the natural world, just as our ancestors once did? Shail is behind the camera. Kristen is in front of it. Both of our consumption is on record. The natural elements, branches, flowers, roots, placed alongside the consumed objects, plastic, paper, and packaging, represent what exists before extraction, and what diminishes after it. The pictures try to capture our attitudes to consumption, being surrounded by it, lost in it, reaching for nature to hide behind the guilt, walking away without looking back, knowing and continuing anyway, and finally, choosing to stay with what we leave behind. That is where change begins.

The lifecycle of these everyday objects, versions of which most of us consume in some form, tells the same climate story twice. Carbon released at the moment of production, methane at the moment of discard. In 2022 alone, the waste sector emitted 1.28 billion tonnes of CO2-equivalent greenhouse gases, with methane accounting for 1.15 billion tonnes. Under a business-as-usual scenario, global consumption is projected to increase by over 50 percent by 2050.*

In an era where climate action is being threatened and centralized systems are failing us, these frames insist on a different approach, one that begins not with institutions but with the individual, because collective change accumulates object by object, choice by choice, frame by frame. The evidence here is personal, embodied, and impossible to dismiss.

These photographs represent the first edition of an ongoing series. The second phase, currently in progress, takes that same consumed material off the floor and onto the body, food packaging, delivery boxes, and plastic bags reshaped into sculptural garments, moving through three environments in sequence: a retail space, a waste facility, and a forest. The same objects shift in meaning across each context, moving from provocation, to reflection, to reformation.

All photos © Shail Joshi, from the series Of Excess and Essential.

* Cook, Ed; Ionkova, Kremena; Bhada-Tata, Perinaz; Yadav, Sonakshi; van Woerden, Frank. 2026. What a Waste 3.0: Global Snapshot of Solid Waste Management Toward Circularity until 2050. Urban Development Series. Washington, DC: World Bank. DOI: 10.1596/978-1-4648-2309-1.

About the Artists

Art Director and Photographer: Shail Joshi

Shail Joshi is an environmental conservationist and photographer whose work sits at the intersection of people, place, and climate. He is the author of Along the Betwa (ORO Editions), a visual narrative documenting the impact of large-scale urbanization on river systems and the communities that depend on them. His photographs have been featured in the International Photo Biennale in Chennai, the Living Water Museum, Veditum India Foundation, and bylines of National Geographic. As the former photographer for Brooklyn Baithak, a pioneering monthly platform for South Asian arts in Brooklyn, he has contributed to the documentation and celebration of classical performance arts. Shail holds a Master in City Planning from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and is a former architect, bringing a multidisciplinary perspective to his practice. He currently works at World Wildlife Fund (WWF) on climate adaptation, community engagement, and climate governance. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Model and Co-Art Director: Kristen Tadrous

Kristen Tadrous is a sustainability and circularity professional whose work sits at the intersection of corporate accountability, community engagement, and waste systems. As co-director of the Clean Bushwick Initiative, she designed zero-waste education programs and led community campaigns in partnership with NYC agencies, local artists, and elected officials. Her writing on regenerative textile economies has appeared through Hecho x Nosotros, a UN ECOSOC-recognized organization. She is a founding board member of MovementBase, a technology platform supporting mission-driven organizations. Kristen holds a Master's in Sustainability Management from Columbia University, where she also served as a teaching assistant for an Equity, Policy, and Sustainability course. She currently works at the Aspen Institute's Business and Society Program, advancing corporate sustainability for long-term societal health. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.