Portuguese photographer Jose Ferreira provides us with a startling look at the harsh reality of underdeveloped countries. In Maputo, Mozambique, just a few meters from the airport, is the dump of Hulne. Two kinds of people live in this trash land – garbage collectors and the others.
Garbage collectors are the pawns of a few businesses and can “flourish” through recycling. They frantically scavenge through the roads of garbage in search of objects with value. If they find something, it can later be worth more bread or milk.
Ferreira says the others resemble too many caricatures of the poor and homeless, who are often camouflaged between common jokes and cartoons from the civilized world. He says these people, who have empty eyes and shapeless smiles, make the experience more human.
“The uneasy conscience of what I see, drastically changes my perception of things,” says Ferreira. “There, the value of things never was on the color of the shirt or even in the shoe size. In the midst of so little, and surrounded by such heartbreaking putrefaction, easy guarantees such as we have like ‘we eat meat everyday,’ never became so disturbing.”
