Lost, Abandoned, Discarded or Forgotten

Lost, Abandoned, Discarded or Forgotten is a new blog based around photographs of abandoned items observed in the environment.

This is a blog devoted to photographs of stuff that people leave lying about - lost, abandonded, discarded or simply forgotten.

I have been documenting these phenomena for about twenty years, first with analog, then with digital cameras. The archive of images grows continuously and the problem has always been - what to do with all of these photographs?

I am interested in what they tell us about our relationship to objects and to the material world. I am also interested in how these things change when dissociated from their usual context. Paradox and poetry emerge.

An early phase of the process involved documenting plastic mineral water bottles that had been discarded in forests, on beaches, on mountainsides, and otherwise in the natural environment. I was struck by the disconnect between the idea of bottled mineral water as something health-giving, and the thoughtless act of leaving large amounts of non-destructible plastic in the landscape. A selection of these images were exhibited within the international art project Overtures Am Wasser which took place in Munich in 2004.

Other themes or sub-categories include; submerged bicycles and shopping carts; tv sets and computer monitors; items of clothing.