Some work in progress images from a investigation into the shipping industry.

I am undertaking a photographic project titled Eight feet high, eight feet wide, twenty feet long, as an exploration of the diverse and often complex themes at the heart of globalization.

I am interested in the lives of seafarers as their lives to me represent the relationships of interdependence that globalization has created, relationships that we as a wider society rarely consider.

The sailors of container ships are the lynchpin of globalization. They allow us to experience a contraction of distances, increasing the ease by which we can interact with someone on the other side of the world, by spending their working lives facilitating our consumer ones. As author Rose George puts it, it is “the invisible industry that puts clothes on your back, gas in your car, and food on your plate”.

I hope to create work in collaboration with seafarers, as kindly facilitated by the Mission to Seafarers, to bring the lives and work of these hard working sailors to the wider public through this project.

If you are interested in collaborating or contributing in anyway to this project, you can email me at info@ericjong.com.au