Ditches & Gutters
Last April, when the world was in lockdown and everyone was to stay close to home and physically distant even when venturing out for fresh air, Darwin and I started a rather unusual photo project called Ditches & Gutters.
I write ‘unusual’ because ditches and gutters are those convenient things we tend not to see in everyday life, except perhaps when they aren’t working as they should. Then we’re forced to confront their utility - and our wasteful nature as our garbage floats by in the overflow or snags in tight corners. For photographers who see the world in terms of colour and tone, pattern, line, texture and shape, a ditch or gutter is not an unsightly purveyor of waste water but a playground of visual delights!
This past April, we drove to the nearby quiet country roads searching for that most wonderful thing…spring puddles! I mean, we’re like kids in a candy store with this stuff! Sure, from the car ditches can seem very dull indeed.
Yes, I am photographing cow shit on a fence in this photo above. Although as a photographer I see the weird potential in this roadside view. (The car that drove by me in the image below laughed out their window when they realized what we were photographing! To each their own…).
For us, spring ditches are an exciting opportunity, a confluence of winter’s scourge and the stirrings of new life. They’re the catchpoints of debris, the thoroughfare of the forgotten and discarded. They show the ugliness of death and the promise of change. They reveal our wasteful and careless culture.
There’s so much energy in ditches and gutters. Essentially, these man-made structures mimic natural seasonal streams and water ways. Along with the wind, rivers and streams are the great re-distributors of material on earth. They flush toxins and redistribute nutrients. They expose new soils and harry old gravels away. In spring, something that seems far away right now, Darwin and I delight in playing with pattern in the transitioning verge.
Who knows? Perhaps on your next drive you’ll see some gems in the weeds yourself!
