It sometimes happens that you see photographs that you wished you had done yourself. For me, like these. The gloves I have made, but not the other. I like this. It is colorful, playful and provokes a thought about our consumption society.
Buckets, above
‘It is not just previous things that are the material means of carrying a memory. It is this truth that Haygarth so engagingly and deftly explores and celebrates, and to which he offers a kind of requiem’
Stuart Haygarth walked from Kent to Land’s End, picking up the trash he found on beaches – and arranged it into collections that show us how weird the ordinary objects in our lives can be.
Toys
Initially using a trolley that stuck too easily in the Kent mud, Haygarth switched to carrying his treasure in a rucksack. Walking near Broadstairs, he says, ‘I stumbled across a long pink plastic penis wedged in between some rocks on the cliff face. It turned out to be a novelty straw, which made me smile and feel like an archaeologist discovering an ancient drinking implement’
Graphics
In an essay about Haygarth’s work, Design Museum director Deyan Sudjic speaks grandly of his project: ‘The impulse to collect is universal, and it goes to the roots of what it is to be human … We collect in search of order and meaning, and sometimes to signal our distress or to console us in our inability to deal with daily life’
Collection (Blue)
In his book Strand – the Old English and German word for beach – artist Stuart Haygarth presents photographs of synthetic flotsam that he collected from England’s shoreline, and arranged in neat configurations, creating a taxonomy of trash• Strand by Stuart Haygarth is published by Art/Books
On a photographers mind 