Rubble From 9/11 Was Sent to Just One Landfill. This Photographer Has Spent 9 Years Documenting It

After the 9/11 attacks in New York City, nearly 1.5 million tons of rubble were removed from the site and sent to Staten Island’s Fresh Kills landfill. Once the largest dump in the world, the 2,200-acre site had already been decommissioned, and a competition for park designers launched, when it was selected as the place where Ground Zero materials would be redirected. Finally, in 2003, the decades-long revitalization project that would turn the stinking landfill into a massive wildlife park—subtly renamed "Freshkills"—officially began. Led by landscape architect firm Field Operations, the project has been partially open to the public since 2021 and will be completed by 2037.

But photographer Jade Doskow has been well-acquainted with the goings-on in Staten Island. For the past nine years she has been photographing the park, now as the Photographer in Residence, documenting the curious landscape forms—four mounds: north, south, east, and west—with images that quietly showcase the rewilded paradise. The West Mound, where the waste from Ground Zero was sent, holds special significance for New Yorkers as it has become what she calls a "humble memorial" to that day. Doskow’s photographs are being exhibited at All Street Gallery this month as one of the many tributes to mark the 25th anniversary of 9/11. She spoke with Dwell about her work, and how her documentation speaks to the complexities of creating a natural parkland out of the past’s discards, and the ruins of tragedy. 

Tell me about yourself and your photography practice—what informs your work? 

Jade Doskow: The core of my inspiration, I would say, is the transformations within the urban built environment, and also the unexpected relationships and juxtapositions within that environment. In my previous project, Lost Utopias, I was looking at outdated World’s Fair architecture and landscaping globally, and now I’ve been working for eight years at Freshkills, which was New York City’s largest garbage dump, but is now being rewilded into this really amazing, fairly indescribable engineered wilderness. 

What draws you to these subjects? 

I grew up in a 1700s farmhouse in Pennsylvania, but I would often visit my grandmother in the Bronx, and she lived at the end of the train line overlooking these graffiti-covered subways, which was so fantastic. Part of living in this old house was that often these elements from the past would come up in the dirt, literally; pieces of ceramic or old tools would become unearthed. So I’ve always had this awareness that the past is always present, and certainly photography is the medium for that. It’s the one medium where we can really explore the past, present, and future almost as a time machine. 

How did your residency come about? 

I was winding down the Lost Utopias work after 12 years, and I suppose I was open to something new coming my way. I was teaching a School of Visual Arts class on liminal green spaces in the cities; we were going to community gardens and rooftop farms, and the typical parklands. Through my research, I came across Freshkills, and I arranged a visit. As soon as me and my students set foot onto the Freshkills hilltop, I was just blown away. I’ve just never experienced anything like it. It’s these kind of infinite meadowlands punctuated by methane pipes, and then surrounded by the New York City skyline to the north and to the west, the New Jersey industrial cityscape. I was immediately drawn in and asked how I could become the main photographer here. I ended up submitting a multipage proposal to Sanitation and Parks, and a few months later they approved my initial proposal, which was to photograph for 10 years all around the site. It’s such a complex place. I just keep learning more and more, and being more and more inspired. 

Walk us through the landscape—what are some of the natural and unnatural layers that you were uncovering? 

Fresh Kills stopped taking materials in 1996, and the only time the site was reopened was in 2001, following the Twin Towers tragedy. Because of that, the West Mound, which is where those materials were brought, has taken the longest time to rewild, engineer, and transform into its future self as a park or wilderness. Each of the mounds is a pyramid: Underneath are household waste and trash from the last 53 years, and then there’s multiple layers of engineering and barriers to essentially separate the new meadows and trees and so on from what’s beneath. It’s kind of like a mummification process. There’s leachate, which is what we would commonly call garbage juice—the liquid that you might find at the bottom of your compost or something like that. That has to be treated; there’s several laboratories on site at the leachate treatment plant that use a lengthy process of organic and inorganic steps to clean that water and return it safely to the waterways. Methane is also produced by garbage and Fresh Kills was actually one of the first sustainable sites in this country in that, starting in the 1980s, they were piping that methane into the usable gas grid of Staten Island. So within these pyramids, there’s methane wells and flare stations to burn the gas off. But above all that is the thick, impermeable plastic layer, on top of which soil is brought in from around the country. Then finally, that’s where the plantings happen, where they plant native plant grassland species to create the park of the future. 

In the U.S. we’ve become very good at hiding our trash. While photographing this site, how were you thinking about trash and garbage?

I’ve gone through many levels and layers of understanding the site and how it relates to the greater tristate area. I'’e been a New Yorker for a very long time, and I spent a few years living in the Hudson Valley and learning about, for example, invasive phragmites—they’re going to grow wherever there’s polluted swampy land. Then I started seeing the phragmites all over the Hudson River region and I thought, okay, so that’s not that much different than Freshkills. Where I live in [the Brooklyn neighborhood of] Red Hook, the entire waterfront is postindustrial. I thought, well, how is this any better or worse than the designated place where we brought our trash? So I guess I started to look at everything kind of as an equivalent in a way, like, well, is the postindustrial Gowanus neighborhood or Red Hook neighborhood any worse or better than Freshkills? I guess I started to think, the trash is an endless problem, but so much of America are these postindustrial sites, and it’s the same complicated process for making this a viable and livable place for wildlife or humans.

The gallery exhibition that you’re doing right now is coinciding with the 25th anniversary of 9/11 and the rubble that was sent to Fresh Kills. I want to ask about whether the legacy of that event or its residual memory can make us think differently about "trash." How is this rubble being incorporated into the landscape and in what way does it change the meaning of a landfill? 

It’s been a very complex process out at West Mound because for a lot of folks it was this horrifying experience, and then they’ve lost their loved ones, and then they’re being told that the city is bringing materials to what was the most notorious landfill in New York City. There were a lot of complications following 9/11 because of this. But at the same time there was nowhere else in the city that was large enough or had the equipment to deal with the immense tonnage that was brought over from downtown Manhattan, and extreme care was used in handling every single bit of material that was brought over.

For me, I was a young photographer when the Twin Towers were attacked. I watched them fall right before my eyes while I was biking over the Williamsburg Bridge to work. I was working as a photo printer, and I biked to work the next day, and I was printing people’s pictures of victims of the attack with blood and ash on their heads. Everybody who was here has their experience. Because I do have a visceral experience, I definitely much more deeply considered the West Mound, and that’s why I put on this show. I think of it as a sacred New York City cultural and historical site, not the same as the rest of Freshkills. Certainly, all of the government agencies and sanitation have treated the West Mound as such. There’s a humble memorial upon the peak of West Mound, and so it’s definitely to me and and to everybody who works out there considered very differently than the rest of the site. There’s a lot of discussion about the 25-year anniversary, and I really hope that folks visit this exhibition and find some kind of closure in the beauty and tranquility that now is part of the West Mound, where the September 11th materials were brought. 

All of your projects have a durational quality; you spent 12 years on the World’s Fair sites and eight years in Freshkills, and are creating an exhibit that speaks to a durational grieving that happens, a durational understanding. Why is it important to you to spend this much time on these types of projects?

I wouldn’t say it’s an intentional thing. It’s just how I work. I deep dive into projects, and then I’ll just have a feeling when the investigation is done. With Freshkills, it’s such a complicated place in terms of how long it takes to rewild every millimeter of the site, of how much financial investment and time is required to create even an acre of city park, and there’s all these themes that keep becoming clear to me as I keep working. The way I think and work is slow and thoughtful and reactive. With Freshkills, it’s this very complex kind of warped reflection of humanity and all of our good and bad choices, and it’s also deeply poetic. 

What is something that surprised you about what you observed, something that you learned through your discovery and visits that you’re hoping will be communicated to people who see this exhibition?

I’ve been thinking of Freshkills as a real shape-shifting kind of site. I feel that a lot of climate-based artworks tend to be fairly doomsday. But that also kind of freezes people into inaction. I think the Freshkills is highly imperfect. I hope that it empowers people to think, like, even if we destroy something, we can rebuild and bring back wild creatures more quickly than one might imagine, even in places that we’ve considered completely destroyed and decimated.

Updated on 9/14/26: This piece has been updated to correct the content of the waste sent to Fresh Kills. 

Related Reading:

Q&A With 9/11 Memorial Architect Michael Arad