Squashed fruit oozes juice, a raspberry grows mouldy fur and rotting flowers melt into the gloopy remnants of yesterday’s dinner. Top it off with some assorted bits of plastic and what do you have? A bunch of garbage. 

Normally we stash it in the bin and quickly put a lid on it, hiding it safely from sight until a truck comes to carry it out of our lives – burying it in anonymous landfills, where we never have to look at it or think about it again.

But what happens when we zoom in and take a good look at what we throw out? This is what photographer Maisie Cousins invites us to do in her Rubbish series. With luscious colours – sensual and glistening within carefully framed compositions – this is garbage as you’ve never seen it: gorgeous in its own strange beauty.