Abandoned Folders

In Switzerland, recycling is almost a civic religion. Paper and cardboard are collected separately, sorted with near-ritual care. But folders, those sturdy binders of bureaucracy, sit awkwardly in this otherwise elegant system.

Made of cardboard and stubborn metal lever-arch clips, they’re annoying to dismantle and hard to recycle properly. Add to this the requirement to keep legal and financial documents on paper for ten years, and homes and offices slowly turn into quiet archives.

When that decade finally expires, entire histories are discarded at once.

These conditions make Zürich an unlikely stage for a small, poetic sight: abandoned folders on the street, half archive, half trash, briefly exposing private bureaucratic lives before disappearing again.

I ended up using these photos to fine-tune the color extraction algorithm behind https://okpalette.color.pizza/. Surprisingly, the palettes pulled from sun-faded covers, street dust, and office-era pastels turned out unusually beautiful; muted, accidental, and very Zürich. I’ll keep updating this post as I refine the algorithm and add new finds from the streets.