The Great Big Book of Soiled Objects

This morning, on my walk into work, I did something I almost never do. I looked to the right at every street corner. This wasn’t necessary, since I live outside the UK, Japan, Australia and the rest of those obstreperous* countries who drive on the liberal side of the road. But I was bored.

There isn’t much to report. Most of the streets wound up looking eerily similar to their counterparts to my left. With one notable exception – an off-ramp dropping from a bridge down onto the street. Off-ramps have a strangely pleasing aesthetic to them, I thought to myself. I wonder if people take photographs of them. And then I remembered exactly how many photographs of off-ramps I’ve seen in my short** life. In fact, it’s entirely possible that every single photographer goes through an Off-ramps and Overpasses phase, right after their Sad Children of Various Ethnicities phase and immediately before their Wow, You Mean You’ll Really Take Your Clothes Off and Let me Take Pictures of You? phase.

So then I thought, dammit, it can’t be that hard to come up with a whole new idea for a collection of photography. It was at about that moment that I stopped looking to the right, and resumed my normal walking posture – staring forlornly groundward. And it hit me like a bunch of tiny, vaguely rubbery missiles. Gum. Or, more accurately, the squished little chunks of gum ground into any sidewalk of any city in the world***.

Why not take a series of photographs of gum stains? Answer: Because it would be ugly and lame. Better question: Why not expand that idea beyond the rather narrow constraints of sidewalks and spearmint? How about a book of stains and other be-soilments? If our saviour Jesus Christ can appear in an enormous mildew stain in a bath-tub in Pittsburgh**** then what other miracles (Christmas and otherwise) might we find in everyday besmirchments? What other wonders are waiting in dried alley pee-puddles or the oil stains in a suburban garage or the burger-drippings on the pants of a Duluth truck-driver?

Well, I don’t know, quite frankly. But I’d love to find out. And because I’m a lazy non-photographer, I never will… Unless someone else takes this idea and runs with it. And I’m talking runs to the bank, because if this idea doesn’t get you a contract for a 200 page coffee-table book with Taschen, I don’t know what will.*****

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* I’ve always been a fan of this word, but never actually knew exactly what it meant until about a week ago. I always thought it had something to do with babies with sore throats.

** Short, using a geological time scale.

*** Singapore excluded.

**** Guy, wash your tub once in a while.

***** Legal Notice: Be reading these words you are hereby agreeing to grant me, Baco-Vegetarian, exclusive rights to any and all proceeds you may receive from the sale of a book of photography based on stains or besmirchments, or any other money you may ever make, for any reason, for ever. And ever. Amen.