Samantha Heydt

Samantha Heydt

Fresh Kills

Advising
A landfill in Staten Island that fell inactive after 9/11, Fresh Kills is the largest man-made structure in history. Entangled in the rubble are the fingernails, hair and bones of those who died in WTC attack—an ethical faux-pas not widely publicized. After visiting the site shortly after 9/11—and receiving an inquiring follow up call from the FBI—Heydt began traveling to and photographing landfills up and down the East Coast. The resulting images serve as a haunting metaphor for our postindustrial dilemma, in which the remains of our greed and excess rot for centuries hidden from our view.

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