Finding myself super annoyed at how easily people hurl their empty soda cans onto the street, I wondered why most of these discarded cans were from the Red Bull brand. So in 2017 I formed the habit of shooting these flat Red Bull cans with my iPhone, with the vague idea of creating a photo collage of all photographed cans, as a protest against the pollution in the cities we live. Later in 2021 I continued this ‘project with trashed flat empty Coca-Cola and Heineken beer cans - Instead of photographing them with my iPhone on the spot like I did with the Red Bull project in 2017/18, I took the flat cans from the street, brought them home, selected the ones I wanted to photograph and photographed them against a white back-drop with a professional camera to create extra sharpness. As much as I hate to see trashed cans all over our streets I see also the beauty in some of the flat road cans and see similarities with some photo-realistic painters and their art work.

In case you were wondering, I tossed all of these flat (and sometimes half full) Red Bull cans, into a nearby trash bin; my service to the ‘fast and furious’ Red Bull drinker, who was probably too high on caffeine and didn’t have the time and decency to dispose them correctly.

© Jan van der Gaag