Discarded

About the collection

The Trash Project

           When I started this photo series I had been working in a restaurant for almost 5 years. I did many different jobs there, from training new servers to cooking, and recently, cleaning and maintenance of the property. I began my day by sweeping the parking lot of all the trash that the patrons and employees leave lying around, mostly comprised of cups and cigarette butts. I kept noticing trends in the locations and the types of trash. Chewed gum always found itself on the right side of the entrance, used toothpicks on the left. Food containers, cigarettes, and cups usually found on the back dock. One day while sweeping I noticed a bright green cigarillo package and found myself drawn to its color and shape, a rectangular package that was folded in a way that created a zigzag. Something about it was beautiful and I began to think about how much work goes into creating attractive packaging just for it to end up destroyed and discarded.  I took a photo of it and stared at it for a long time. I found myself wanting to seek out more interesting shapes, colors, and compositions. At the very least, it would spice up my morning routine and take away some of the drudgery. My routine remained the same with a few added steps. As soon as my dustpan is full, I dump it out onto the sidewalk or parking lot asphalt and just observe. I often wonder how insane I look dumping out the trash and taking photos.  Looking at these piles of trash I found compositions, color combinations, relationships, and meanings. Compositionally, lines created by straws echo lines in shadows and cracks in the sidewalk. If I were to cut it down to just the lines and shapes and remove all traces of the original objects, I would have a beautiful abstract composition. In analyzing the colors, the need to create packaging that is bright and eye catching adds to the image and says something about our efforts to be attractive only to end up being discarded. Like looking at any work of art, be it two or three dimensional, I analyzed the shapes and relationships between the objects, thinking about where each individual piece began its life, and how it ended up being swept up into my dustpan.  Spilled drinks seem to echo crime scenes, the slide door of a dumpster resembles a window. Through quick cell phone photography, I recorded each composition.  The trash was somehow beautiful to me, and I found stories in every composition. An empty chicken container with a sauce package a foot away to me seemed to speak about relationships, companionship, and emptiness. My engagement with the daily practice of sweeping trash led me to think about more than just color and composition; I began to think about how we treat our shared spaces. I remembered reading about how schoolchildren in other countries sharing in the responsibility of maintaining cleanliness in their shared spaces and wondered what was so different about our culture that we couldn’t do the same. By taking pictures of the waste, I feel as if I am not only cataloguing trash, but collecting pieces of people’s lives, little echoes of their ephemeral nature.  My intention with this project was to continue collecting photographs, both in color and black and white and creating a series of vanitas and memento mori still lifes using the things that we throw away and forget about, in the way that we too will be forgotten and lost in time.