Awakenings

Rodolfo Morales

“One Man’s Trash- Another Man’s Treasure”

         Garbage- every day it surrounds us, no matter where we go.  This is especially true here in New York, a city with so many inhabitants, and it is even a problem for the government to figure out where to put all the trash that is produced and accumulated daily.  It is not uncommon for people to find public trashcans on the corner of every street, usually overflowing or filled to the brim with the trash of every passer-by. Even if individuals walking the streets of New York City do not see the garbage, many times they can surely smell it from a mile away.  Many times, people tend to avoid walking by garbage or even looking at it.  However, I felt that garbage is an essential part of New York City, whether it is a pleasant aspect or not, and for this reason I set out to photograph trash at its best.  In a sense, for this project New York’s trash was going to be my treasure.
I decided to primarily photograph garbage, which included trashcans, litter on the street and garbage bags.  My main goal was not necessarily to portray trash in a negative light, but rather to personify garbage and make it seem alive.  This was not too difficult to accomplish since in New York, garbage cans, litter, and garbage bags appear anywhere and everywhere and seem to be an almost organic part of the city.  Garbage cans especially lent themselves to this task, standing in position almost as if ready to pose.  Three pictures in my presentation that clearly demonstrates this are “Tin Soldiers,” “The Ideal World- Diversity,” and the picture of the garbage can “crossing” Queens Boulevard.  In “Tin Soldiers,” the four metal trashcans seem to be standing at attention, guarding the entrance to the building behind them.  The photograph of the “formidable trashcan about to cross Queens Boulevard” was actually rather humorous to me, for when I photographed it, the man standing next to it had been crouching a second before, so the trashcan looked huge.  Unfortunately, when I actually took the picture, the man had stood back up again.  Finally, “The Ideal World- Diversity” is simply a photograph for three different types of trashcans in front of the library building at Baruch.  However, I felt they also represent the diversity that can be found at Baruch, with people of so many different cultures and backgrounds studying together in one place.
Although for the most part photographing garbage in New York was enjoyable, at times the task was also rather difficult.  The first and foremost problem that arose was the fact that the weekend I decided to photograph the garbage in the streets, there seemed to be barely any garbage in the streets to photograph.  Maybe I started taking photographs on a day that the Department of Sanitation picked up the trash, or maybe I was just unlucky.  All I know is that when I began taking pictures, the usual piles and piles of garbage that I was so used to seeing, the litter and smoked cigarettes lying casually on the floor as if they belonged there all the time, and the random dirty papers floating around the streets of New York were not there at all.  Instead, the streets were clean, immaculate even, a phenomenon that I had never seen before in my life.  Even the usual black splotches of gum that I was so accustomed to staring at on the sidewalk as I walked seemed to have disappeared overnight, almost in defiance of me.  Thankfully, these clean conditions were not so common around Queens Center Mall, so I was able to complete assignment rather successfully.
Another obstacle that I faced was the reaction most people gave me as I walked around taking pictures of garbage in the street.  The most common reaction from people  was a strange look and then a mocking smile at the sight of an individual (me) intently taking photographs of what they considered filth and trash.  Other teenagers especially had such a reaction towards my photography, and to be honest, it was rather difficult to take decent pictures at times with the anxiety of knowing that I was being laughed at.  Other pedestrians tended to get in the way of my photographs.  Unfortunately for me, this was usually when I had the camera set up at a perfect angle to take a shot.  Thankfully, I was able to get past these obstacles and take good, clear photographs of New York’s trash.
Overall, I greatly enjoyed completing this photography project.  Every time I came away from a street corner with a good, clean shot of a piece of trash floating by or a particularly intriguing trashcan, I felt a certain sense of satisfaction that many times is not felt when completing other assignments.  I had a lot of fun doing an assignment that at first I believed would be rather difficult to accomplish successfully.  However, after this experience, I would be glad to take more pictures and expand my photography horizons to photographing babies and animals.

The News always holds a place for trash…

Then again, many times the News IS Trash.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 18th, 2007 at 9:51 pm and is filed under