Recycled Realities [Hardcover]

Near the homes of photographers John Willis and Tom Young is a paper mill that sits in the otherwise pristine and picturesque climes of western Massachusetts. For Willis and Young, this site is one of both aesthetic and philosophical contradictions: despite its verdant locale, the millwith its smokestacks and countless bales of discarded paperbrings to mind the dreariness of industrialization and the impermanence of life itself. But the factory is actually one where such litter is reborn as reusable paper. Willis and Youngs quadtone photographs transform this mill and the innumerable mounds of recyclable waste it processes daily into an indelible and evocative landscape. Recycled Realities is not a jeremiad foretelling the consequences of excessive waste, rampant pollution, or unbridled consumption but rather a profound meditation on the hidden connections and meanings that linger beneath the debris and detritus of everyday life.These unforgettable images of discarded paper from the printed world trace the processes of emergence, revelation, and redemption that make the cycle of life possible. John Willis and Tom Youngs haunting photographs transform a New England paper mill factory and its mounds of raw materialrecyclable printed matter cast off from the insatiable publishing industryinto an evocative archeological landscape, a contemporary Babel. Recycled Realities is a book by two true visual poets, and it is difficult to imagine a richer or more fortunate collaboration. At a time when population and excessive consumption are deeply serious concerns worldwide, John Willis and Tom Young have made splendid, positive, lyrical images out of the waste and debris left over from our busy lives. Man buys what he destroys, Frederick Sommer reminds us, and then goes on to assure us that it is the nature of the poetic act which secures our place in a world we do not control. Recycled Realities is such a poetic act and a marvelous visual accomplishment, all at once.lÃË