Cultural Ghosts: Transient Trash Sculptures Create Found Environmental Art

Have you ever seen something move just at the edge of your peripheral vision? You turn slightly to see what it is, and are shocked by the fact that what you see is more frightening than you dared imagine? This happened to artist, Ken O’Toole, who then began to record and document the apparitions he encountered.

No, they were not actual spirits “ghosts” of the departed. They were harbingers of the discarded – plastic bags tangled in trees.

In this environmental monograph of nearly four dozen beautiful black and white photographs, O’Toole gives a poetic voice to specters of roadside debris. In doing so, he changes the way we see what we would rather ignore.

From O’Toole’s perspective, littered landscapes are transformed from “messy” to “magical.”