‘Plastic sea, perfect storm’: photographer Rob Hornstra exposes in Rotterdam the dark side of Europe’s vegetable garden

Spanish tomatoes ripen under plastic — Photography by a Dutch photographer, Rob Hornstra, shows at Rotterdam’s Kunsthal the dark side of the ‘sea of plastic’ in Almería.

The tower-like cliffs of plastic are inside the exhibition ‘Plastic sea, perfect storm’ at Rotterdam’s Kunsthal, and the exhibition is a harrowing indictment of the way the fruit and vegetables on our tables are produced, as Rotterdam Style reports.

The second panel of the exhibition evokes tarpaulin-covered camps, where the migrants who work in the greenhouses live, with photographs that speak of poverty and dignity lost within the system of industrial agriculture. In Almería, Hornstra photographed the plastic sea from above — an unbroken landscape of greenhouses stretching for tens of thousands of hectares, where the temperature under the plastic can reach 50 degrees Celsius.

The artist also turns his gaze towards the human cost of this system: exploiting a foreign workforce, often without legal documents, working and living conditions at the limit of survival, and severe land pollution from plastics and toxic wastewater. The exhibition remains at the Kunsthal until March 7, 2027.