Thursday, February 5, 2009

Urban Mining





Hansen, Liane.  "In Cairo Slum, the Poor Spark Environmental Change." 2009, NPR. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89956754 .

Zabaleen, which roughly translates from the Egyptian language as "garbage collectors," is the single term used to describe the urban poor community in Manshiyet Nasser, and their monstrous efforts to sort, recycle every piece of refuse that comes their way.  The Zabaleen has been continuing their efforts for decades, and now teaming up with Thomas Taha Rassam Culhane, founder of Solar Cities- in order to keep their environment from getting any worse in the city.  With poverty and populations of such great proportion, Egypt was cited as an example for having the most potential of being effected by greenhouse gas emissions, and with disproportionate negative effects.  With this, Solar Cities is installing solar hot water heaters on the rooftops of homes in the slums of Cairo.  
After seeing the photographs of the mounds of garbage collection, my first thoughts were "where the hell would they put solar hot water heaters?" .. there refuse is everywhere, including the rooftops of homes.  What really struck me as unimaginable, is that with all the efforts of meticulous recycling- decades of tradition in reusing- this city just appears to be one huge waste dump.  I think that this article was supposed to be inspirational about the future demise of the planet, but for me it did quite the opposite.  How can such an extreme effort result in such a hideous means of living for so many people?  ... This story has motivated me to create back stories to my photographs, in efforts to have more control on their outcomes.  For instance, a world overcome with trash has lead to an earth that can no longer support human life.  

1 comment:

Teacher Tom said...

Perfect! That is exactly what this work is supposed to do for you. I am so glad that you have been able to connect this to your work. Having a backbone of sorts to build one of your images around is going to be so helpful. Keep up the good work!