Transparent plastic cucumber wrappers allude to protection, perhaps from contamination, the germ spread of unclean hands, or from natural processes of decay. Growers and retailers have historically defended shrink-wrapping as being a necessary procedure, focusing on the moisture loss and safer transportation for this fruit which contains over 90% water.

I found these clear skins to be a threshold to perishability and exposure, and to the growing dilemmas of food distribution. With a prioritisation of protection in shelf life over flavour, mass production over nutrition - the global food system exerts dichotomies of abundance and waste.

Over the course of 10 months, I gathered these typically discarded materials from cucumbers I purchased, alongside donations from friends, online call-outs, and market stall holders in Hatton Garden. Each wrapper was exchanged for a photogram copy of itself, chosen by the donor and created as a reciprocal token for their gesture.

This collection of photograms have been made with a found roll of expired photo paper; and with incremental shifts in the colour enlargers settings in the darkroom; going through a colour gradient of what could mean fresh to rotten in the lifecycle of a cucumber.