Discarded containers in modernist arrangements. Or at least that’s how the arrangements strike me. Because they are arranged on a flat surface and photographed from above, these container collections read more as pattern and graphic design than as objects in space. And from a certain perspective, flat and 2D = “modern.”
Although, these groupings are also reminiscent of how objects might be organized in a museum, so maybe they’re really “old school.”
On left: “Green Bottles and containers” (Collected on the beach. Floyd Bennett Field, Brooklyn, NY. Jamacia Bay, New York Harbor); on right: “Clear Glass Jars and Bottles”(location Dead Horse Bay, Brooklyn, NY. Jamacia Bay, New York Harbor)
Creating a decorative “order” from the “disorder” of litter & landfill, Rosenthal’s photographs seem to serve various constituencies. Clearly part of the Significant Objects meme, but equally at home in Austin Radcliffe’s Things Organized Neatly collection.
(Another photograph, after the fold…) [Read more…]