life of garbage

Cairo, suburbs, just twenty minutes from the city center. This is the neighborhood of Manshiyat Naser, inhabited by a majority of Coptic Christians. They number at least twenty thousand and are called Zabbalin, the "garbage men"

Cairo, suburbs, just twenty minutes from the city center. This is the neighborhood of Manshiyat Naser, inhabited by a majority of Coptic Christians. They number at least twenty thousand and are called Zabbalin, the "garbage men," as they are the official waste collectors of the Egyptian capital. They collect garbage directly from the homes of the capital and bring it to this neighborhood, recycling up to 80 percente of Cairo's waste. Upon reaching Garbage City, as it has been dubbed by foreigners, every garbage bag is opened, and the contents are manually sorted into sixteen different types of materials. Here, work, waste and domestic life, garbage and the time of social life compose a single reality.

And in this place full of garbage flows daily life, with grocery shops, banks and bars where you can stop with friends. Where life seeks family, solidarity and future.

These are not photographs that seek to aestheticize reality, distancing and neutralizing it in the pleasure of perception. It's a story about human being in their belonging to the space in which they live.