Project “Die Mülldeponie” (‘The garbage dump’). I started about four years ago: the garbage or better litter pictures ‘things in…’. I take long walks in the woods every day ever since I was a child. My brothers used to take me with them when they went out with their dogs. There was always a few garbage lying around in the forest, which we sometimes carried home and disposed of there. I was angry about why people couldn’t take back the crap they could carry INTO the forest. Overall, especially the elderly made sure that nothing was thrown on the way. Then the environmental movement developed and with it there were even more reasons to keep the environment clean.
But that’s changing. In the past few years I have noticed that more and more rubbish is simply being thrown on the street, on dirt roads and in the woods. Apparently, not many people notice it. The municipalities also pay little attention to it. Everyone wants to rid the oceans of plastic, but forests and meadows are degenerating more and more into landfills. About four years ago I started photographing this garbage.
But just photographing it is boring and nobody cares. So I edited the pictures like I do with all of my pictures. So far, I’ve done most of them with my cell phone and worked on them there. Then I give them appropriate titles, sometimes ironic, sometimes funny, sometimes serious. Depending on what I can think of. I always post them on Facebook. Interestingly enough, people will already see these images. They perceive them as poetic, funny, beautiful or touching and at the same time they register that it is rubbish. Every now and then, discussions arise about the fact that it has gotten worse. Then suddenly they realize that they are also watching. I believe that this makes people more aware of what is going on around them. Maybe it will change for the better then.
Language is something very important to me so I usually search for a title that fits the situation like in ‘puncture’. The tire in the water was so obvious and nobody seemed to bother. I thought ‘Oh, ok, somebody had a breakdown, a puncture! Obvious! Sure! And if so you leave your tire in the creek! Why not?’. ‘Christo by nature’ is ambivalent and ironic at the same time.
Often – mainly plastic – is wrapped around trees and stones, etc. and it looks as if it was natural but of course everybody knows it’s not. The bottle in ‘Dust2Dust’ almost looked like the soil in the little creek where I found it and again, plastic won’t become soil for and endless amount of years. There are many more and I guess I will never run out of motifs.
‘BaumWohlTuch’ would be translated in ‘treefeelgoodcloth’. I exchanged one of the ‘l’ of the actual German word ‘Baumwolltuch’ (cotton cloth) in ‘h’. Thinking of a scarf a human being would wear it would make us feel good but I doubt that it’s an advantage for a tree.
Susa Solero is a German artist living and working in Frankfurt.
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