Pausing
in the rain, a woman working as a trash picker at Nairobi's Dandora dump, which
spills into households of one million people living in nearby slums, wishes she
had more time to look at the books she sometimes comes across. She even likes
the industrial parts catalogs. “It gives me something else to do in the day
besides picking [trash],” she said. Image by Micah Albert. Kenya,
2012.
Pulitzer
Center grantee Micah Albert's image of a young woman reading in the Dandora
dump site in Kenya placed first in the contemporary issues/singles category of
the World Press Photo Contest. Albert's work is part of the Pulitzer
Center-sponsored project "Buried in Dandora: Voices of Nairobi's Waste
Management Disaster" which documents the livelihoods of the people in the
communities surrounding the massive dump.
World
Press Photo's annual contest brings global attention to chosen works through
exhibitions and publications. The foundation exists to inspire understanding of
the world through quality photojournalism.
Dandora
Nairobi’s
Dandora Municipal Dump Site has been officially "full" for years and
is implicated in a host of diseases--yet provides employment to scavengers.
Views from the dump and from those nearby.
Kenya’s
Dandora Municipal Dump Site is the only dumping location for waste in Nairobi,
East Africa’s most populous city, and serves as a provocative starting point
for understanding the growing health, poverty, and sanitation problems facing
the rapidly expanding capital and region.
Located
just 8 km from the central business district, the 30-acre Dandora site
literally spills into the households of nearly 1 million people living in
nearby slums. This project addresses what proximity to the dump has meant for
the the health, dignity, spirit, and landscape of these surrounding
communities, in the process uncovering the neglected voices of the people whose
livelihoods are affected daily by Dandora. Behind the statistics of children
with respiratory ailments, toxic blood lead levels, skin disorders, and fatal
diseases directly attributed to the waste are stories of communities that have
grown to depend on the dump--from street children who live off the money they
make selling food and other items they find in its piles to residents who are
paid pennies a day by private cartels to sort and recycle waste.
The
country’s leadership has long shown alarming indifference to Dandora – ignoring
environmental laws, UN-commissioned health studies, and calls for closure from
human rights groups. A contested February 2012 process to decommission the site
was recently canceled. Through a narrative of survival amidst tragic health and
environmental consequences, this project explores a marginalized population
long overshadowed by an industrializing city’s expansion.
The Photografer
Micah
Albert is a freelance documentary photographer represented by Redux Pictures
photo agency. Based in northern California, he specializes in and is passionate
about difficult-to-access regions and the ensuing, and often times
under-covered, issues.
He
received his B.A. from Point Loma Nazarene University’s Keller Visual Art Center
in Graphic Communications in 2002. Since 2005 Micah has worked on documenting
projects including the global food crisis in Yemen, Dinka cattle camps in South
Sudan, insecurity and unrest in Darfur refugee camps in Chad, marginalized
Kurds living in Syria, undocumented refugees living in Jordan, gender-based
violence in rebel-controlled territories in DR Congo, post-election unrest in
Kenya, and overfishing practices in Tanzania.
His
clients include The New York Times, Smithsonian Magazine, BBC, The Washington
Times, National Geographic Traveler and many others.
He
currently lives in Sacramento, CA with his wife and daughter.
Source:pulitzercenter.org
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