Artist Benjamin Von Wong in Pointe-Claire with 10K plastic bottles, mermaid for unique photo shoot

Conceptual artist Benjamin Von Wong is used to swimming with sharksor chasing storms for his photoshoots, but this weekend he's navigating a decidedly less adventurous locale a warehouse in Pointe-Claire full of old plastic bottles.

Von Wong sayshewants his latest projectto get people thinking about how much plastic they are throwing away.

He said he's worried aboutWorld Economic Forumestimates thatby 2050 our oceans will have more plastics in them than fish.But he knowspeople don't like to talk about plastic.

• Plastics dumped in world's oceans estimated at 8M tonnes

"It's a boring topic," Von Wong said.

His solution? Make the issue about a mermaid.

He's collected10,000 plastic bottles and enlisted volunteers through Facebook to helpremove thelabelsand cleanthem.

"The idea is to create a series where a mermaid is trapped, or sitting within, a bunch of plastic bottles."

On Sunday, he'll take photos from upabove the scene in his trademark hyper-realistic style.

He hopes to make the images so beautiful that they go viral online and get people to take a closer look at what they're doing with their plastic.

"How do you generate a conversation over stories people don't want to talk about? I think art and beauty are the way to do that," he said.

Fellow photographers flock to help

Some of the volunteers at the warehousetravelled for more than an hour and half to help Von Wongclean bottles for the project.

Volunteer Martin Perreault is a photographer and said he wanted to see how Von Wong works in person.

"I wanted to see what he does with it," Perreault said. "He creates awesome projects that touch everyone."

The warehouse space has been donated by Pointe-Claire-based flooring manufacturerPower Dekor North America.

Spokesperson Alexandre Dcarie said the company wanted to support Von Wong's work in raising awareness of environmental issues.

"I think he's a visionary. He does unique and interesting stuff," Dcarie said.

Photos that raise awareness

The formerMontrealer'swork is known around the world andhe's captivated the Internet with his beautiful and thought-provoking images.

He's currently working on a series of photographs which highlight conservation.

The project took him to Fiji where he photographed sharks to draw awareness to howmany of them are harmless and beingkilled by people.

It also led him to the U.S., wherechasedstorms in the hopes of highlighting what he calls the "coming storm of climate change."

Von Wong isa former mining engineer who taught himself photography before taking it on full time in 2012.

His work has garnered a large following on social media since then.

His most viral content so far is a YouTube mini-documentary of photographingunderwatershipwrecks. It has been viewed more than 1.5 million times.

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