There is No Away

Stories about the stuff we collect and what happens to it after we’re gone. Neil Benson was a photographer and salvage artist who believed that “trash is simply a failure of imagination.” When he died in 2023, Benson left behind a house filled floor-to-ceiling with his collections of typewriters, Hawaiian shirts and a jacket covered with hundreds of buttons. That jacket reminded storyteller Neil Bardhan of his father’s collection of political campaign buttons and childhood trips to antique stores and a motel-room flea market.