New Work

This series is part of a year-long ethnographic study of waste pickers at dumpsites in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Often disparagingly called scavengers, waste pickers in developing countries are often depicted as symbols of poverty and human desperation and misery. Through these images, I encourage you to move beyond these common misconceptions and instead see waste pickers more as urban eco-warriors creating value from goods that have been discarded and dumped.

Waste pickers can collect over 50kg of recyclables per person each day from the dumpsite and can earn double that of their peers doing contract work for garment factories or construction sites. They call the dumpsite “the market on top of the mountain” because of the opportunities it provides to exchange goods for money and acquire goods to use in their homes, such as clothes and cooking equipment. Their actions transform the dumpsite from a place of death, decay and a representation of urban overabundance to a space of entrepreneurship, creativity and possibility.

In my study, I explore competing systems of meanings, both local and global, which re-value things and people, and how within these systems waste pickers negotiate interactions with outsiders, often to their advantage. As a documentary photographer I’m interested in exploring the use of still photographs to be expressions of anthropological understanding of the human condition.