Yale student wins photography competition in rural Kentucky with his essay on the theme 'Picking Up the Pieces'

Tommy Fryman on his scavenging route through Cynthiana, Kentucky (Photos by Lukas Flippo)

From the inside out: Fryman hunts through a trash bin.

Lukas Flippo of Yale University was judged to have the best photo essay in the Dusk to Dusk 24-Hour Student Photojournalism Challenge in Harrison County, Kentucky, this weekend. The event was held by Boyd's Station, a local nonprofit arts-and-journalism residency with a gallery in the county seat of Cynthiana. Ten students pursued the theme "Picking Up the Pieces," assigned shortly before the contest began. The runner-up was Annie Barker of Michigan State University, who also won for best single image, and Abigail Pittman of the University of North Carolina was third.

Here's how Flippo described his subject: "We start with a partial inventory of what's in Tommy Fryman’s shopping cart, drenched in rain on this stormy Saturday in downtown Cynthiana: over a hundred crushed soda cans, a new pack of diapers, a new window blind, a pool noodle, and 4 pizza pans. Oh, and the chief offenders, two metal pipes. Even with the rope tied around them, they are too big for the cart, extending over a foot over the railing of each side of the cart.

Fryman gets paid at the recycling center.

"Fryman’s life is a numbers game. 24 cans a pound, 50 cents for a pound of aluminum at Randy’s Odd Jobs Recycling Center. Seven days a week, Fryman walks around town, averaging 10 miles a day, to pick up cans and other goods to sell at Randy’s Odd Jobs Recycling Center to supplement his disability check, which he receives for epilepsy. Cynthiana has no recycling system, and Randy’s business helps Tommy make the ends meet.

"Fryman is well known in the community. People stop their cars on the road to give him cans and businesses leave them by their dumpsters. No one bats an eye when Fryman bends over a trash can. The task gets harder everyday. Fryman gets short of breath, and legs frequently buckle and give out. But that won’t deter him from his mission: to clean the streets of Cynthiana and make some honest cash."

“Not many people have a heart like I do,” Fryman said. “And I won’t give up, not until God calls me home.”

Flippo's photo essay included five other pictures.