The innermost tip of Newtown Creek, furthest from where it branches off from the East River, is about a ten minute walk from my old Bushwick apartment where I lived from 2008 to 2019.
I was initially drawn to it as an explorer, surprised to find a body of water this far inland, and challenged to find a means to gain access to each section as it snakes behind a barricade of commercial lots.
What I found was a dark beauty. Weed trees clutching to oily soil. Barnacle encrusted timbers feasted upon by translucent crabs. The modern-day flotsam and jetsam floating in the water and washed up on the shore: water bottles, condoms, potato chip bags, styrofoam cups, car tires, and steak knives.
Taken altogether the project has become a way to see both the effects of our mass produced disposable society on the natural landscape and to see the resilience, strangled though it may be, of the world of trees, water, and fauna.
