Beautiful Trash
By Charles Rushton
24 February 2008
Despite our best efforts to control litter—fines, public work crews, civic volunteers and recycling programs—we find plastic bags, fast food containers, bottles and cans everywhere from our city streets to the remote desert. Now, I don't condone littering, but I have discovered that I can find beauty in trash. I think of my search for this beauty as my own personal recycling program. I am not interested in litter per se, but in how nature acts on litter. In particular, I document, with my camera, ways in which the water that collects in ditches, streams and lakes transforms trash into objects of elegance and beauty. I have a few preferred haunts, "my favorite ditch," "the ditch near our house," and "the stream in back of our house." Water-filled, dried-up or iced-over, I can always find the stuff of wonderful photographs in these locations. This photo-essay looks at just a few of the many images that I have complied into my Trash Series.
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