Trash 1970

Walker Evans made this photograph of some discarded detritus, probably sometime in the middle of the twentieth century. It's a close-up of what appears to be trash, but, you know, it’s been re-presented and re-contextualized. Photography, like painting, is a process of selection. And in this case, it’s also a process of elevation. The color palette is mostly muted – off-whites, grays, and browns, that are not dissimilar to Kurt Schwitters collages. The crumpled paper has a texture that suggests age and wear. One part of the debris seems to be the remains of cigarette packaging – it has an image of a flower and some red text. I notice the way the edges of the paper are frayed, like torn canvas, as if to reveal the history of the paper's use. There's a formal elegance to the arrangement – a kind of minimalist beauty in the decay. I'm reminded of how artists like Robert Rauschenberg took the discarded elements of everyday life and transformed them into art. Ultimately, this is a conversation about seeing – what we choose to see, and how we find beauty in unexpected places.