Debris c. 1965

Walker Evans made this photograph, probably with a large format camera, at some unknown date. It’s called "Debris," and it shows exactly that—a messy pile of junk at the edge of a street. I imagine Evans, a master of straight photography, coming across this scene and seeing something beautiful in the mundane. Maybe he was drawn to the textures, the way the light hits the crumpled wrappers and broken bits. He seems to be saying, “Look closely, there’s something here.” It makes me think about other artists who find beauty in the discarded, like Kurt Schwitters with his Merz collages. There is an ongoing conversation here about what’s worth looking at and what’s not. Art helps us find unexpected poetry in the everyday.