Barbara Blasin’s environmental flip flops
Art project ‘An Endangered Particle‘ (2003-09) by photographer Barbara Blasin is a continuous project that begun in 2003 as a reaction to heavy landscape conflagrations in five tourist localities at the Adriatic coast: The island of Solta, Ucka Mountain, the Dubrovnik hinterland and the islands of Bisevo and Hvar) in Croatia.
Barbara Blasin: An Endangered Particle, photo: lomodeedee (cc)
Barbara Blasin photographed the scenery between 2003 and 2007 in order to trace all changes, of which some weren’t only recoveries, but new ecological ‘wounds’ in already damaged landscape.
Photo: An Endangered Particle by Barbara Blasin (c)
She wanted to point out the deconstruction of our natural surrounding, so she started a few years ago a collaborative project with the ecological organization Dolphin Dream Society and NGO BLOK (organizers of UrbanFestival) with an aim to produce flip flops, bags, pareos, deck-chairs and the rest of beach accessories that bear printed photographs of above mentioned burned landscapes.
The idea behind the ‘An Endangered Particle’ is to establish a sort of quality connection among several sectors such as: business companies, governmental institutions responsible for the environmental protection and NGO sector. This might as well boost up the economy of local communities.
Barbara Blasin: An Endangered Particle, photo: lomodeedee (cc)
Part of the income from the sales would be designated to reinforce the reforestation process of burned areas. Because most of the burned localities are places of extensive tourism, Blasin’s trendy beach accessories are perfect example of raising awareness tourist product for environmental protection, not to mention the prevention aspect.
Bio:
Barbara Blasin graduated Design on the School of Design, located at the Faculty for Architecture in Zagreb. She works primarily in the fields of graphic design and photography, as well as a regular collaborator of UrbanFestival Zagreb. Jointly with Igor Markovic, Blasin is co-author of the book The Women’s Guide Through Zagreb, intended ‘to save from obscurity of the past, but also of the conformism of history, contribution, influence and lives of women who had participated in the creation of Zagreb or were “merely” a part of everyday life in that city. Forgotten, anonymous, often suppressed female history is symbolically represented with a selection of “anonymous” biographies illustrating the time in which they had lived’.