by PATRICK LEJTENYI photos by PAUL-ANTOINE PICHARD

In a disposable culture, trash is out of sight and, for the most part, out of mind. Our mountains of refuse, from plastic bags to stale food to discarded cell phones, are trucked away to dumps, hopefully far from human settlement where residents won’t be affected by the noxious stench or the toxic leachate making its way into the water supply. But for millions of people living in the developing world, these piles of garbage are a source of life and sustenance—indeed, the only one. In shantytowns the world over, generations of families scrape out a living sifting through mountains of filth to find anything that could possibly be recycled for money.

French photographer Paul-Antoine Pichard spent almost a decade documenting the lives of the people known as “recycleurs.” From Dakar, Senegal, to the Philippine capital of Manila and its notorious Payatas dump, the scavengers share a single-minded pursuit: surviving the only way they can. His exhibit, Mines d’ordures (Garbage mines), will show at the TOHU until March 10.

Pride and poverty

Speaking over the phone from his home outside Paris, Pichard says he was first attracted to the subject by accident. In 1997, he found himself in Dakar, on assignment for a photo agency documenting the burgeoning crack addiction in the Senegalese capital. Unable to find the proper perspective in that secretive and highly dangerous world, he befriended a group of street children he met who described their daily existence of picking through rubbish heaps on the edge of the city. Intrigued, he followed them to the site, only to be greeted with outright hostility by the scavengers. “It went very badly,” he says. “They threw rocks at me, threatened me.”

He returned the next day and explained that he wasn’t trying to change anyone’s life, but rather that it was his job to “document the human condition.” He made a deal: they would let him take photos, and in return he would help set up, through his contacts in French non-governmental organizations, basic medical and educational facilities (this would be a strict no-no for a conventional journalist, but Pichard doesn’t consider himself as such). The bargain was struck, and Pichard has made five return journeys to Dakar.

Thanks to a successful exhibit in 2000, he got a juicy grant from the French government to travel the world and document the lives of scavengers. The photos aren’t pretty, but Pichard says it would be a mistake to consider these people complete victims.

“Everyone wants to work, and they want to be portrayed with some dignity,” he says. “They are very proud. They consider what they do a real job. Entire families do this, but it’s still the human condition at its worst.”

Useful squalor

Life among the trash heaps, however, is Hobbesian in its brevity, violence and capriciousness. Pichard says he rarely saw anyone over 50, and child mortality, malnutrition and disease are rampant. What water there is is full of dioxins, oil, chemicals and trash. People die regularly from cholera, typhoid and even the plague. “Hygiene is awful,” he says.

Others can be crushed by heavy vehicles and dump trucks, or even by their very source of income. In July 2000, Manila’s Payatas, which sprawls over 50 acres and supports an estimated 6,000 families, collapsed and buried nearby shanty shacks. Hundreds, if not thousands, were killed, buried underneath tons of garbage.

After the Payatas collapse, Philippine authorities briefly closed the dump, but re-opened it quickly. “The problem is, this works for the government,” says Pichard. “If people weren’t there, Manila would suffocate under its own refuse. The government has no interest in fixing the problem.”

The scavengers also held public demonstrations to get the government to allow them to get back to the only work they have. The situation is worse elsewhere. In places like Cambodia and Madagascar, Pichard says, scavengers are even more desperate, and often eat what they find in the dumps.

Scavenging, Pichard says, is a family affair, and few if any ever escape it. Men, women and children pick over the trash, and live and die in it. He says some NGOs try to provide education for the children, but the closest he has seen anyone escaping the daily ritual of sifting through the mountains of trash are some who manage to save enough to become garbage wholesalers, who buy the waste from the scavengers and sell it to recycling industries in the city, and one Senegalese man who became a city garbage truck driver. “In general, they all stay within the universe of the garbage dump,” he says.

Mines d’ordures will show at TOHU’s Espace SSQ (2345 Jarry E.) until March 10. There will be a vernissage with Paul-Antoine Pichard on Thursday, Jan. 18, beginning at 6 p.m. For more info, see www.tohu.ca and http://paulantoinepichard.free.fr.