Pass or Trash

So YOU Want To Hand This Down ???

Original Photo

The political issue that I chose, is based on climate change. Some believe climate change is real and others do not, but all the while the earth is deteriorating, and barely enough is being addressed and changed to avoid or prevent it. I felt that this is an important issue because if we know there is something that can be done before things become irreversible and destroyed then, I believe with the time that we have people as a whole should be treating the world better. In the end, I would assume that we want the earth to remain healthy for it and for us to survive.

For my photomontage, the original image shows an older person’s hands, passing down the earth in the palm to a younger person’s hands. The background color is light and bright as the earth’s colors are bountiful and rich. I chose to change the background of the image to a darker saturation, the black representing what’s dead. The grey represents what’s dying off, and the red for the poison that is in the air. The hand colors are similar to the background to reflect the doing portion on the human’s part.

 The older hands (present times) hold a platter not quite silver and missing fruit and are imperfect along with the rotting fruit of an apple and strawberry. The burnt coloring on the fruit and the dark layers represents the pollution placed on the earth. This is being passed down to our future children (younger hands reaching up) unknowingly they'll inherit these problems and have to deal with them. The broken grandfather clock was lassoed into pieces to represent the children of the future being grandfathered into a world of circumstances created by the hands handing it down to them. The three splits of the grandfather clock represent three places in time as well, past present, and future. The 3D words Pass It Down are what the hands are doing, during the present times what people are doing to the earth with the inevitable intention of passing this down to the future.

Finally, I chose to place pieces of the original image and place them on top of the final hijacked photo. Pieces in the sky on the hands and the earth represent hope, what we’d want it to be rather than the poisoned earth and surroundings that it is.

This hijacked photo was created with the intent of challenging those of the present to recognize what they are passing down to the future. What is in the platter is not appetizing or even a whole platter, which brings the question, is this what you want to hand down? My ideal placement for this image would be in a public area where the everyday person can see it the effect being that people are influenced by what they see such as an ad for Coca-Cola, this photomontage would be placed for the masses to see and think as they walk past possibly holding their child's hand and looking down, causing them to think about what conditions are being left for their child. Once the thought arrives in their mind, the next step would be doing something about it as recognizing the problem is the first step to change.