Toxic Vanity & Fatal Beauty

Eleanor Ryder has two gorgeous photos posted on the National Geographic's website.

The first one, shown above but in much higher resolution on the NatGeo site, is titled Fatal Beauty. Here's what she has to say about it...

A magnification of plastic particles in lip-gloss. The irony of the image is in its intrinsic contradiction; that a product coveted for its ability to beautify is also capable of illimitable harm. The transient nature of a beauty product, once released unbounded in to the marine environment, has the ability to cause infinite damage and contamination. As we lick the gloss from our lips and ingest it, particles enter the sewerage systems to infest our oceans at every level.

The other photo is titled Toxic Vanity and shows similar particles in eyeliner.

Ryder's website has further photos from her Forever Project,

The Forever Project is a portfolio of images focusing on marine debris and micro-plastics. 

Being in my final year of university I wanted to study something I was passionate about and marine welfare is set deep within my heart. 

The images of nano plastics in the Forever Project are a study of the uneasy dichotomy which I feel exists between beauty and marine pollution. These images of micro and nano plastics in cosmetics explores the transient nature of beauty products and their ability to impact upon and do illimitable harm to the marine environment.

I'm thinking we might want to use a little less plastic or make sure it'll actually degrade in something approaching a human lifetime.