Garbage picker, Mexico 1996
Out of desperation children fight vultures for food to eat. Dead animals and toxic wastes are dumped indiscriminately. A small girl came up to me with the head of a recently killed sheep. Around her, animal carcasses were rotting; at times the smell is almost unbearable.
In the shadow of the city a fire burns; the acrid air hangs like so many sorrows. At the edge of the fire, enshrouded in smoke, live the forgotten - small and larger communities of people - whose existence is ignored as a social anomaly. These communiti es scavenge for things they may be able to sell. Too poor to buy enough food, they supplement by scavenging in the rotting garbage.
Copyright, 2001, President and Fellows of Harvard College