To most, the term ‘dumpster diving’ comes to mind with only enough consideration allotted to last resort preoccupations or musing the questionable antics of an evolving freegan culture. To the locals of Jardim Gramacho, the essence of the act comes with the urgency of everyday survival. Lucy Walker’s recent film 
“Waste Land”, starring the contemporary Vik Muniz, follows the recycling lives of the towns natives in documentary style. The film interweaves several dumpster-side chats with the catadores and Muniz’s recyclable portraiture of them. Carol Kino’s article in The New York Times relates in lexical documentary the worlds of people like Tião Santos, who used the junkyards discarded literature to educate himself to the point of heading an organization for the catadores, and Muniz, who would find himself using the same remains for protraiture of whom the profits would benefit:
“The film, directed by Lucy Walker (“Blindsight,” “Countdown to Zero”), tracks the development of a 2008 series of monumental photographic portraits made from trash. Called “Pictures of Garbage,” they were created by Mr. Muniz in collaboration with the garbage pickers of Jardim Gramacho, a 321-acre open-air dump just outside Rio that is one of the largest landfills in Latin America.
This informal workforce — or catadores, as they are known — are the reason Brazil, with only a few municipal recycling programs, manages to reclaim a huge percentage of its trash, said Sonia Dias, the waste-picker specialist for Wiego, a global policy research group. This summer Brazil passed a law to eradicate open dumps and integrate the catadores into the recycling industry. Yet the catadores are still an underclass. The film tells the story of Mr. Muniz’s effo
rts to help those at Jardim Gramacho take charge of their lives, while giving them a new perspective on the world through art. …
The catadores in the film soon reveal themselves to be as personality-packed as Mr. Muniz. They include Tião Santos, president of the workers’ cooperative Association of Collectors of the Metropolitan Landfill of Jardim Gramacho; the scholarly Zumbi, who has educated himself by reading discarded books; Suellem, a teenage mother who has worked at Gramacho and lived in its shantytown since her childhood; and Magna, who became a catador when she and her husband fell on hard times. Though their work may be grim and dangerous, many of them seem to have a crystal clear idea of its environmental worth. And, as Magna says, “It’s better than turning tricks at Copacabana.” “
To read further about Muniz’s own progression from his past, continue with the rest of the article at The New York Times.
The official trailer for ‘Waste Land’:
