French photographer, Philippe Spigolon lives in a small town in France, doesn’t travel much, but uses his daily walk to his hospital job to find a universe of wonder. Philippe was featured on Lenscratch last year and he recently sent me a new series. Philippe has created an interesting typology of mailboxes, more specifically mailboxes that reject junk mail. It’s a simple observation, but when combined, make a strong statement about keeping the advertising world at bay.

No ad.

I think I heard or read somewhere, a long time ago, that Andy Warhol’s house, at his death, was absolutely full of leaflets and junk mail that the American artist had kept on purpose. Or perhaps I imagined it so as to comfort myself in the habit I have had, in my turn, for some years to pile up (in cardboard boxes, under the stairs) great piles of publicity material.

Why keep it? Time will perhaps give this collection of leaflets a quality (not just documentary – who knows?) that we don’t notice today – we who are so bad at seeing what is familiar and habitual to us. There is the possibility of creating a collection at the smallest possible expense – for the least well off or the most economical.

After some decades, a whole epoch will be reborn on opening these boxes, no? Unless I throw them out beforehand for want of space – or unless I cut them all up for some hopeless collages or other abandoned creations.

I also read that the leaflets that pile up in our letter boxes can amount to forty kilograms in a year (I don’t weigh mine.)

So many forests cut down! And what about the ink, and the colouring, and all that money spent by so many local authorities in processing our waste paper? …

So: ad or no ad?