Beauty is always in the eye of the beholder. Most consider South Brooklyn’s infamous Gowanus Canal to be an eyesore, a polluted blight. Once the nation’s busiest commercial canal, it has now fallen on hard times. It is toxic, and often smells of sewage. Its depths conceal mercury, lead, coal tar, and other contaminants. Urban legends call it a Mafia dumping ground – one novelist noted that it is “the only body of water in the world that is 90 per cent guns.” Yet there can be a haunted beauty to the place – the graffiti that marks its banks verges on the spectacular, and the ivy climbing its chain link fencing makes us see a garden amidst the decay. And that is what I envisioned when I made this image.