Per Johansen has taken captivating art photographs of organic meat and vegetable squeezed inside clear plastic containers. In his project, titled Mæt (meaning Full), Johansen uses plastic bottles, an object associated with careless consumption, to stand in for the human stomach and appetite. He is exploring human consumption, and calling into question the ethics of the meat industry in particular. The work asks the viewer; “Are you full now?”
These examples show a vegetables, sausages and fish within mass produced synthetic bottles.
Using Johansen's work as inspiration, I created my own photographs of meat and vegetables squeezed inside clear plastic containers. This was challenging as the contents had to be inserted through slits in the back of the bottles, while seemingly leaving the bottles intact.
I am partiularly pleased with my rainbow trout as I managed to capture the full spectrum of the colours of the scales. The chicken proved the most challenging due to sheer size, but eventually I sourced a suitable vessel in the form of an empty bottle of clothes conditioner.
As you can see from these contact sheets there was a lot of experimentation involved in this photo shoot. Using plastic bottles meant that using lighting would always be a problem; namely that the reflections didn't show in the bottle, nor the bottle cast a shadow. To resolve this, I used a staged set with softbox lighting and a white backdrop to photograph my elements and took the time to get the lighting just right.
I also had minor problems with manual settings on the camera and my shutter speed. The partial blackouts on some photos were caused by my shutter speed being too slow.
I have added a sketch of my lighting setup (below).
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