What if we had to literally live surrounded by everything we throw away? This is the provocative question posed by American photographer Gregg Segal with his striking photo series "7 Days of Garbage," a project that is both aesthetically compelling and deeply unsettling. The concept involves asking friends, neighbors, and families to save all their trash for an entire week, then photographing them lying among their accumulated waste.

Created in 2014 in his garden in Altadena, California, the series transforms everyday garbage into what can only be described as contemporary still life compositions. The portraits are carefully staged in settings inspired by nature – forests, beaches, ponds, or snow-covered landscapes – as if to remind viewers that our waste inevitably ends up somewhere in the environment. The result is visually striking: images that balance beauty with discomfort, transforming the mundane reality of waste into a mirror reflecting our lifestyle choices.

With "7 Days of Garbage," Segal documents far more than simple volumes of trash – he creates a social portrait of consumer-driven America. Some families attempted to "curate" their waste or remove their most embarrassing items before the photo shoot, while others fully embraced the experiment, exposing without filter the concrete evidence of their daily habits. The photographer views this as a form of modern archaeology, providing testimony about our values, our comfort levels, and our dependence on excess consumption.

Segal hopes his photographs will serve as a wake-up call for viewers. Given that the average American now produces nearly twice as much waste as they did sixty years ago, this type of visual awareness campaign could encourage people to reconsider their consumption patterns. The artist believes that this stark visual confrontation with our waste might inspire behavioral changes that traditional environmental messaging has failed to achieve.

With a blend of irony and clear-eyed observation, "7 Days of Garbage" transforms our trash bins into works of art, reminding us that what we discard reveals a great deal about who we are as a society. The series joins other creative environmental awareness campaigns, such as the work of activist Rob Greenfield, also known as "Mister Green," who protests overconsumption by wearing thirty days' worth of his personal trash as a wearable installation.

The photographs create an uncomfortable yet necessary dialogue about American consumption habits, forcing viewers to confront the environmental impact of their daily choices. By presenting waste in an artistic context, Segal makes the invisible visible, turning discarded materials into powerful statements about modern life and environmental responsibility.