“Here we have a man whose job it is to gather the day’s refuse in the capital. Everything that the big city has thrown away, everything it has lost, everything it has scorned, everything it has crushed underfoot he catalogues and collects. He collates the annals of intemperance, the capharnaum* of waste. He sorts things out and selects judiciously: he collects like a miser guarding a treasure, refuse which will assume the shape of useful or gratifying objects between the jaws of the goddess of Industry.”
Baudelaire Ch., about le chiffonnier (the rag-picker), Du Vin et du Haschisch (1851)
*capharnaum: a confused jumble, a place marked by a disorderly accumulation of objects
Archival Pigment Print, Various sizes.