Keith Arnatt used his camera, and a detailed knowledge of art history, to embed entirely ordinary objects with
new meaning. This photograph is part of a series of photographs taken at Howler’s Hill – a landfill site near the Forest of Dean – that confronts the impact of our throw-away society. Under the warm, early evening light, the rotting piles become something arresting, even beautiful. Bulging binbags and, cardboard boxes and even a tangled string of fairy lights take on all the emotion and grandeur of 16th-century Baroque oil paintings.