Artist’s Journal:

I came home from my tour of the landfill with my mind blown wide open. I had jumped into the pickup truck with Scott, the landfill manager, and immediately begun filming while he drove me around the enormous hills of the landfill, and I held my phone horizontally to capture as much landscape as possible. But as we drove around and I listened to Scott explain the operations, I noticed that he never talked about how much ‘square footage’ or geography was left to fill; instead, he spoke of ‘airspace’. It slowly clicked for me: the landfill is not allowed to get any larger, and all available lands have been used up—so the only place to stack more garbage is vertically.

‘Airspace’ referenced the remaining vertical space they were allowed to fill up. All day long, the large dozers run over the newly-delivered garbage, compacting it downwards into the hills and mounds. Pour more in, compact more down. Repeat.

Once I grasped this, I turned my camera vertically and took all my shots in portrait mode. The story of the landfill was vertical, not horizontal; it was a story of height and depth, not width and breadth. The only untouched territory was the sky.

This was the first piece I made to convey what I had learned.