Ab-solutes: lake ontario (2025)

Macro photographs featuring microplastic contaminants collected from the sands along the shoreline of Lake Ontario. Although microplastics are quite featureless to the naked eye, and often difficult to distinguish from grains of sand, lens and lighting reveal textures, colours and complexities that suggest structures that are cellular and/or celestial, organic and/or geologic.

The formal characteristics of the images simultaneously reference microscopic and telescopic imagery - gesturing toward the idea that complex ecological issues transcend simplistic delineations such as micro/macro, you/me, here/there, them/us, local/global.

“Ab-Solutes” is a play on the words “soluble” and “solution”. Projects in this body of work deal with materialities that are not readily “digested” or dissolved by land or water. The title is also a reference to theorist Hent de Vries’ idea of the “absolute” or “that which refuses to dissolve completely into the milieu of human knowledge”. Our material legacies will remain long after the bodies that left them in their wake have passed.

Ab-Solutes: Lake Ontario (Digital Images)