Hermann Huber @ Pulse fair, Miami
The highlight of my whole Miami trip might have been meeting and talking with this artist at Pulse. Hermann Huber has been documenting the Zabbaleen in Cairo (a garbage community) and has fascinatingly haunting photographs and videos...You may know this is one of my major interests...in Cambodia and Nicaragua...for cyclecraft blog, etc. He's also doing a project in Buenos Aires.I bought the book which he signed and I am eager to learn more from his experience. we will meet again when he comes to ny in the spring and hopefully correspond in the meantime.
I have been looking through the book and treasure it. The photographs have such a strange quality of peace to them…as foreign and difficult the imagining of working amongst and within mountains of garbage is…where in most of our daily lives we distance ourselves from it as much as possible and nearly always create several membranes and barriers to protect our skin from touching it…..as one goes through the book there is something that happens….from looking into the eyes of humans who seem so accepting of it and comfortable within it….
To even know that it is humanly possible to accept it is a strange wisdom offered to viewers through these portraits.
The beauty of the photographs can be talked about at length as well. I'm reminded of Powaqqatsi.... Perhaps my favorite film. Baraka as well…
I have so much I would like to talk with him about…explore. My interest in the garbage communities is multilayered. I am trying to see more and understand. with human society and natural systems, resources and recycling, but also so many philosophical and perhaps spiritual questions….He reminds me that his work is not about poverty...and I slowly understand and it is a revelation of sorts. Because I realized how I had been blinded by the poverty...blinded by my reactions which did not allow me to truly See the people . His photographs are perhaps the closest I've come to understanding something quite complex about existence and humanity and connection. I’m still a person struggling to understand the world past and present and my best role within it present to future. So many unformed questions regarding economies, tradition, progress and individual freedoms and happiness. The book also brings to mind many of the confusing issues of historic social castes, stigmas and prejudice related to livelihoods…..it makes me more curious of the points/areas of integration….when/if there is much mingling with the world outside the area and how that is…
I still do not accept the condition, especially as it relates to children and women..but am interested in exploring with more depth and subtlety the nature of the system and also hear the voices of those who comprise it so as not to impose overly simplistic and naive 'solutions'.
So many things to consider:
one interesting tidbit:
This informal human garbage sorting system of the zabbeleen supposedly recycles 80% of the garbage that reaches the dump. 80%(!). We here in the states with our elaborate privatized and mechanistic recycling systems do not reach even 30%.
Our out of sight, out of mind mentality cannot be sustainable...
what then is? who of us would Choose the lifework of the zabbeleen? or perhaps it is a more gradual mass movement of reuse and open channels of post-consumer trade. (ebay, upcycling, reconstruction, freecycle,consignment and thrift etc)..which uses a human sorting system as well...
I have been looking through the book and treasure it. The photographs have such a strange quality of peace to them…as foreign and difficult the imagining of working amongst and within mountains of garbage is…where in most of our daily lives we distance ourselves from it as much as possible and nearly always create several membranes and barriers to protect our skin from touching it…..as one goes through the book there is something that happens….from looking into the eyes of humans who seem so accepting of it and comfortable within it….
To even know that it is humanly possible to accept it is a strange wisdom offered to viewers through these portraits.
The beauty of the photographs can be talked about at length as well. I'm reminded of Powaqqatsi.... Perhaps my favorite film. Baraka as well…
I have so much I would like to talk with him about…explore. My interest in the garbage communities is multilayered. I am trying to see more and understand. with human society and natural systems, resources and recycling, but also so many philosophical and perhaps spiritual questions….He reminds me that his work is not about poverty...and I slowly understand and it is a revelation of sorts. Because I realized how I had been blinded by the poverty...blinded by my reactions which did not allow me to truly See the people . His photographs are perhaps the closest I've come to understanding something quite complex about existence and humanity and connection. I’m still a person struggling to understand the world past and present and my best role within it present to future. So many unformed questions regarding economies, tradition, progress and individual freedoms and happiness. The book also brings to mind many of the confusing issues of historic social castes, stigmas and prejudice related to livelihoods…..it makes me more curious of the points/areas of integration….when/if there is much mingling with the world outside the area and how that is…
I still do not accept the condition, especially as it relates to children and women..but am interested in exploring with more depth and subtlety the nature of the system and also hear the voices of those who comprise it so as not to impose overly simplistic and naive 'solutions'.
So many things to consider:
one interesting tidbit:
This informal human garbage sorting system of the zabbeleen supposedly recycles 80% of the garbage that reaches the dump. 80%(!). We here in the states with our elaborate privatized and mechanistic recycling systems do not reach even 30%.
Our out of sight, out of mind mentality cannot be sustainable...
what then is? who of us would Choose the lifework of the zabbeleen? or perhaps it is a more gradual mass movement of reuse and open channels of post-consumer trade. (ebay, upcycling, reconstruction, freecycle,consignment and thrift etc)..which uses a human sorting system as well...