In April 2015, I was offered a job to be a reporting photographer for an exhibition of one environment organization – Enda Vietnam. Particularly, my job is about talking with and taking photos of the private garbage collectors in Thu Duc District of Ho Chi Minh City in order to collect their sharings about lives.
I would like to share the story of Mr. Liem – the one who was a typical trait of the private garbage collecting community there.
Mr. Liem is at the age of 55 at the moment. His wife is 63. Both of them are the private garbage collectors in Ward Truong Tho, Thu Duc Dist for about 10 years.
“Day by day, we wake up at 3:30 a.m and prepare for a new day of collecting garbage. Whether it rains or extremely dries, even it is Sunday or any holidays in a year, we still have to go to work. If we are off just in one day, the number of garbage will increase sharply and our work will become more exhausting. Sometimes, we feel so sad because we work in terrible –smelling garbage dumps which disgusting to most people.” – shared Mr. Liem.
That day, I also got up early and went to “work” with them. However, my work was capturing their daily works. To be honest, I felt terrible and uncomfortable by the smell, so it is definitely true that only the ones who are familiar with this job can patiently stay together with it for ages.
All photos were taken by Nikon FM/Nikkor 35-70mm/Efiniti Uxi 200.
...at 5:30 a.m
I appreciate their job and somehow they look like flowers in the toughest ground.
...in Waste - Live and Love Exhibition.
[ Texts in wall: ...is Life - is Work - is Love ]
