STRAIGHT CUPCAKES

Photographs by Ellie Brown

Disposable Culture

A Kensington photographer connects with her neighborhood through trash.

by Kate Kilpatrick

“Anyone here?” Ellie Brown calls out as she steps into an abandoned Kensington building, looking for interesting trash. “When I go into places where homeless people and addicts are staying, I usually find [discarded] bedding and clothing and personal stuff in addition to the used condoms and needles,” Brown says, explaining the plus-side of her more daunting searches.

As long as nobody objects, Brown snaps away with her camera, documenting the hideaways, corners, streets, alleys, lots and backyards in a neighborhood choking on its trash.

“I literally just let my nose lead me,” says Brown, a 32-year-old Boston native with curly cropped bangs and a disarming smile. “I’ll turn a corner and have a feeling something good is up there—and usually there is.” In a jackpot she might score “furniture, clothing, baby stuff, dirty diapers, industrial trash—things that look interesting but I don’t even know what they are—plastics, broken bottles, cat food tins, dead animals. Often it smells like something’s rotting when I find these big piles, especially in summer.”

The waste lands: Many of the garbage pits are the result of illegal dumping.

Brown rents a trinity off Kensington Avenue, just around the corner from the brand-new Little Berlin artist gallery. Artists are trickling into the area, but gentrification remains a long way off.

Over her past year as a Kensington resident, Brown has collected nearly 3,000 images of neighborhood trash. Her “Urban Detritus” snapshots capture overflowing household garbage, sprawling piles of illegally dumped industrial or home rehab waste, and basic sidewalk litter.

In these scenes she searches for a personal story—a wispy heap of syringe wrappers; an abandoned pair of soggy Nike sneakers, one shoe missing its laces; a dead cat with matted gray fur and a plastic yellow collar around its stiff neck.

As a photographer, she’s attracted to the abundant refuse, which Brown says “can be quite beautiful.” But as a resident, she feels a simultaneous repulsion and exhaustion from living amid an “obscene amount” of trash.

“I get really depressed if I stay in this neighborhood,” says Brown, who’ll take the train into Center City for mental health retreats. “Cleaning it is almost futile. The city just doesn’t seem to give a shit.”

(Coincidentally, Brown just received a voicemail from the city announcing her neighborhood is the focus of an upcoming street sweep and cleanup.)

Marlene Buck, director of land use management at the New Kensington Community Development Corporation (which borders Brown’s neighborhood but technically lies just east of Kensington Avenue), says there are numerous reasons for the excessive trash problem in the area.

“A lot of houses are under construction in the neighborhood, and a lot of people doing the gutting [are unlicensed and] seem to think it’s okay to dump in the vacant lots. And sometimes we become overwhelmed by our own household trash,” says Buck, adding that people throwing trash from cars, along with fast-food restaurants and takeout stores insisting on dispensing plastic bags with every purchase exacerbate the problem.

Still, Buck says a citywide initiative begun in ’02 that installs fences and plants trees around the perimeter of empty fields and lots has made “short dumping” more difficult for offenders, preventing trucks from simply backing into open spaces to empty their loads. However small streets and alleys remain vulnerable.

“We’re actually not in bad shape because we have more eyes and ears on the neighborhood,” says Buck. “It isn’t as bad as it’s been in the past, but as someone who detests litter, one piece of paper is too much paper for me.”

But for a newcomer like Brown, the quality-of-life issue can seem overwhelming. Which is why she hopes her project will ultimately have a social impact.

“I started photographing to make myself comfortable here. It’s how I operate in a new place—I acclimate with my camera. Sometimes it’s good to just shoot trash and not have to worry about confrontations with people,” she explains.

The project has since morphed into an anthropological study. Brown plans to exhibit the photos in slideshow format at the nearby Little Berlin Gallery in the spring, alongside artist friend David Kessler’s “Under the El” Kensington video documentary project (the focus of a recent PW cover story).

“In my mind I hope the photos can be used for some sort of social change,” says Brown. “We’re just sick of living in this stuff.”

View some of Ellie Brown's work at www.flickr.com/photos/elliebrown.