Bas Princen, Mokattam Ridge (Garbage city)
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Last Thursday i went to see Open City: Designing Coexistence, the main exhibition of the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam (IABR) at the Netherlands Architecture Institute. It's one of the most exciting and satisfying exhibition i've seen this year. Proper report will follow in an hopefully not too distant future. Until then here's one of the striking images by photographer Bas Princen i discovered in the exhibition:
I first thought tPrincen's photograph was fake. How could this be real? Looking online for the location of the photo, Mokattam, i discovered that the image is authentic. It's a hilly suburb of Cairo called Garbage City. The Zabbaleen, a community of mainly Coptic Christians, live there. Since the '50s, they have been making a living by collecting, sorting and disposing of Cairo's waste. The Zabbaleen generally perform this service very cheaply. Waste food is fed to livestock, mainly pigs; what cannot be repaired or reused -steel, glass, textile and plastic bottles- is sorted by hand and sold as raw materials; some material is burnt as fuel. It is claimed that Zabbaleen reuse or recycle 80-90% of the waste they collect (a figure that the most modern waste management systems can only dream of), however this must be put into context of the fact that the Zabbaleen concentrate on wealthier areas. In 2003, waste management was privatized. Foreign multinational companies won rights to collect garbage in Cairo, cutting the Zebbaleen out of the trash business. Ironically, due to a government financial restrictions, the firms ended up outsourcing to the Zebbaleen. But for much less than they had made before. Earlier this year, the Egyptian government responded to the threat of swine flu with a massive program to get rid of the pigs living in Garbage City. This appears to have been a bad idea. Still, this doesn't prevent the slum to be a popular touristic destination. More images of Garbage City: Light Stalkers and Market place. |
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I highly recommend the documentary Garbage Dreams, which gives a peek into the lives of three children of the Zabbaleen.
http://www.garbagedreams.com/
The picture was also presented this week end in Paris at the carrousel du Louvre for the Parisphoto event.
so here you got a nice proof that art is fake. if the photo was fake it would be art. since it's not it's photo journalism.
You got to love art!
The people that live there actually recycle the trash. They feed the food to the pigs and sell the paper, plastic and glass. It's definitely not the most healthy environment to live in, but that's how they make money.
I loved Garbage Dreams!!! I saw it Los Angeles a while ago. Amazing heart warming film.
It is one of 15 films shortlisted for this year's Academy Awards. I hope it makes it to the top 5!
I didnt know about this city before, but after seeing the pic I wanted to know more about the same. Thanks for the photo. Reading the comments makes me think really the people do this?
I have lived in Cairo for the past 18 months - the trash problem has been increasingly spiraling out of control, ever since the government "culled" all of the pigs. The problem is even getting pretty bad in the more Westernized suburbs of the city.