the compost collection - julie fowells photographs

I’ve been obsessed with compost since I was a child, stomping around in the 3 section bin my father built, fascinated by the transition from plant matter to dirt, only to grow more plants. The fact that I’ve always been overly concerned with wasting food makes composting all the more comforting to me; it alleviates the guilt that follows an overly enthusiastic shopping trip at the farmer’s market, and allows me the freedom to not always clean my plate. I find some hope knowing that food I let sit in the refrigerator a little too long will turn into soil, and nurture another plant one day.

I started photographing the pile that sits directly beneath my deck when I began to document everything else in my life. Looking down on the sometimes colorful, sometimes not collection of food and garden waste that I add to every day, it felt like a telling chronicle of my habits… like peering into someone’s fridge, or photographing the contents of their closet. But there’s more to it than that: I think it’s beautiful; not just the process, which is undeniably compelling, but the actual material that ends up in various stages of decay in that pile of otherwise useless waste.