Fotoii Mag Issue #001

Fred Merz The Gramacho Garden. Nancy Brokaw Everyday in Rio de Janeiro, some 1,500 catadores would start their workday in the Jardim Gramacho, until recently the largest landﬁll in the world. These scavengers, both men and women alike, once made their living by sorting through Rio’s mountain of trash, searching for anything remotely salvageable – scrap metal, paper, plastic bags, aluminium cans, bottles - whatever could be recycled. These trashpickers would carry their loads - typically weighing around 500kg - on their backs, making their way from their points of collection to their points of storage. Carrying out their work in the sweltering heat and often dangerous and unsanitary conditions, these catadores had an average life expectancy of 48 years. Nonetheless, Jardim Gramacho provided direct support for 4,500 catadores and indirect support for approximately 30,000 residents in the neighbouring favela. However, in June 2012 Jardim Gramacho was shuttered, leaving the catadores to face an uncertain future. Confronted with the potential environmental disaster that the landﬁll presented and the impending opening of the 2016 Olympic Games, the Brazilian government had decided to close the landﬁll down. For over 30 years, it had been spewing a toxic soup out into Guanabara Bay, and at any moment, the mountain of waste, which reached 75 metres in height and spread over 1.3 million square metres, threatened to collapse directly into the bay. Moreover, Guanabara Bay had also been selected to host the Olympic sailing competition. With their cinematic lighting, meticulous staging and muted colours, Fred Merz’s portraits serve as a record of those who made their livelihood in Jardim Gramacho. In one portrait, distinctive of Merz’s style, his subject is simultaneously revealed and obscured; despite the catadore’s central heroic positioning in the image, he nonetheless appears faceless, literally disappearing under the burden of his day’s harvest. Other images depict a Dantesque world in which ﬁres burn and pickers collapse as vultures circle overhead and shadowy ﬁgures labour through the dark night. The Swiss photographer Fred Merz uses cinematic lighting and dramatic staging to document Rio de Janeiro’s Jardim Gramacho. In this series, Merz focuses on the nightmarish work of the catadores, the men and women who once earned Junior 2010 Digital printing on micro-perforated tarpaulins 100 x 100 cm ©Fred Merz their living by sorting through the world’s former largest open-air landﬁll.

Fotoii Mag Issue #001 | Page 4