TRASH TO TREASURE: FEE-GLORIA GRÖNEMEYER

INSPIRED BY THE NATION'S MOVE TO BAN SINGLE-USE PLASTIC, THE PHOTOGRAPHER TOOK TO KENYA, CRAFTING A PORTFOLIO MERGING FASHION WITH ECOLOGICAL ART.

BY KIMULI ERIYA

Fee-Gloria Grönemeyer’s photos are weird. In a good way. The best way, in fact. The German-born photographer and creative director has a real knack for threading together seemingly disparate narratives in a way that just works.

When she started taking photography seriously, she was a business student in New York. After one sharp whiff of that vinegary-type smell that hangs in the air of a dark room, she scraped off in pursuit of art. Now, home is a quaint little commune in the northeast of France called Bitche.

It’s awfully fitting that Fee-Gloria found herself in a commune—shared responsibilities, community-led, so much of what her work as a photographer stands for. Slap bang in the middle of a pastoral fantasy, the beauty of nature dawned on her. More specifically, our obligation to protect that beauty.

Since that elusive aha moment, she’s become somewhat of a magpie. Fee-Gloria started working found materials into her creative projects, but that was only the beginning. Soon enough, the image-maker was doing dumpster diving, motivated by an impulse to polish off some old tat (that was, in actuality, not tat) to push us, the viewer, to reframe our relationship with waste.

Nairobi, Kenya was a new backdrop for Fee-Gloria, who—alongside stylist Kennedy Mirema—traveled there to produce a photo series for Beyond Noise. In 2017, the nation banned single-use plastic bags, and recently single-use plastics outright in protected areas. It was a close friend, based there, that told the photographer of these progressive developments; and the urge to collaborate with local creatives, just as committed as her to sustainability, was one she couldn’t ignore.

Fee-Gloria’s images are a contemporary blend of highbrow artistry and modern sensibilities. Her compositions are classical—her settings are anything but. Imagine Botticelli’s Venus, only she stands atop a weathered chunk of concrete instead of a scallop shell. And her slouchy mane is blonde, yes, but made of straw, giving post-traumatic bleach and tone. Bottle caps, polypropylene (that kind of tacky material your IKEA bags are made of), and CDs are the type of thing you’d find in Fee-Gloria’s kit. The latter, perhaps a nod to Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring—an iridescent disc dangles from a model’s ear in place of a lonely pearl.

These pictures are contradictory, never failing to satiate the eye’s appetite. Looking good is only the half of what Fee-Gloria’s images do: They explore, they comment, they protest. Meticulously planned and researched, they emerge in response to the global environmental conversation. It’s a dialogue. Are you just going to gawk at the photos? Or do you have something to say? Better yet, are you going to do something—advocate for green policy in your own milieu?