Decay
I’m not the first person to shoot photos of compost. Over ten years ago, I remember a Crossroads Arts District gallery displaying work by an artist that shot carefully composed photos of compost covered in snow. At the time, it appeared to be too artfully arranged, the colors too saturated. It looked too staged to think of it as art.
This composite image is not art to me, but documentation of decay as part of the composting process. The photos were taken at dusk in low light. Most of them turned out blurred and unusable. I discarded most of the digital images as quickly and thoughtlessly as scraps of fruits and vegetables. I cleaned up the four images above in Adobe Photoshop to remove the gray haze of late afternoon winter light. I lightened the images and heightened the colors to visually shrug off the flatness of winter’s tired color scheme.
In daylight, the compost pile is actually quite bright and full of energy as if Jackson Pollack played with his food. New scraps are tossed onto old, rotting flesh like a mass grave. I spot the broken shell of a pumpkin, its flesh pale and dehydrated. It reminds me that Halloween and autumn have quickly passed. Now that I ‘m paying attention, it’s surprising to see how many scraps have accumulated in a short time.
I think about the lack of snow and ice this winter. The soil in the backyard is dry and dusty. This compost is not decaying as quickly as I imagined.
I’m left with evidence of a recent juicing initiative in the household, wilted flowers that now serve another purpose and telltale clues to past meals. It’s heartening to know that this compost found a temporary residence here instead of decaying in a plastic bag destined for a city dump.
In spring, I’ll shovel this compost onto the garden beds and blend it into the soil with seeds and transplants. With luck and good weather, the remnants of the past will fuel growth for spring and summer vegetables and herbs and future meals. For now, I pass the winter keeping track of the stillness strewn about the ground in slow decay.
