At My Feet

I've been collecting pictures of stuff I've found on the floor. I seem to be settling more on images of industrial detritus. It's the sort of stuff that doesn't seem to matter, but I'm finding myself drawn to looking for it.

These objects are probably produced in their thousands, employing hundreds of people to make them, shipped worldwide to fulfil a single and utterly disposable purpose. These things are the Mayflies of manufacturing. They consume huge amounts of energy and time to come into being, only to be discarded without a thought.

I don't think that these things epitomise waste. They perform a purpose, usually one of protecting something of greater value from damage and, by their design, cost the very least they can to manufacture. It's actually a fantastic example of efficiency. Their disposal troubles me, but the disposal of everything troubles me. Ideally, I'd like to see everything we consume find its way back to the bottom of the food chain.

However banal these objects could be considered, I have found a intriguing beauty in them. Something designed to be purely functional inherently lends itself to the purity of form. They're principally designed to solve a problem, so aesthetics are the first things to be lost in their production.

By putting all these images together, I've realised they've started to look slightly hieroglyphic. Their shapes are so basic, they being to resemble characters with distinct meaning, but not just a letter in a language. They're more like symbols for something universally understood.

You can see more on my Flickr stream (link at the top of the page), on the Backspaces app and on Instagram on this hashtag - #i_found_pauljames