WASTELAND

Vik Muniz was born in São Paulo, Brazi in 1961. He began his artistic career as a sculpture in the late 1980’s. As time went on, he became more interested in photographic imitations of his work, ultimately revolving his attention wholly to photography. He includes a diversity of doubtful resources into this photographic procedure. His work has been met with both saleable success and critical praise, and has been showed worldwide. In 2010 the documentary “waste land” was created to show the world how he creates his art. He traveled back to his homeland from where he lived, which was Brooklyn. The movie takes place at one of the largest garbage dumps in the entire world. The picture documents two years of work of Brazilian contemporary modern artist Vik Muniz in generating art with the help of scavengers of recyclables.  The name of this dump is Jardim Gramacho, which is located on the borders of Rio de Janeiro. There he photographs a varied band of catadores that are self-designated pickers of recyclable materials. Muniz’s early objective was to paint the catadores with garbage. However, his cooperation with these moving characters as they recreate clear images of themselves out of garbage reveals both the poise and despair of the catadores as they begin to re-imagine their lives.

The catadores are one of the most critical parts to this film. Tiaõ is the young, magnetic President of the Association of Recycling Pickers of Jardim Gramach. This is a co-operative to increase the lives of his related catadores. He was moved by the political texts he uncovered in the waste. Tiaõ had to persuade his co-workers that arranging could make a transformation. Tiaõ has been gathering since he was 11 years old. Tião, like the other catadores profiled in the film, is far from an skinny scrounger living out a unhappy existence on the way to an early death. But he is modest and has few expectations of earthly glory. Zumbi is the local thinker. He keeps every single book he finds in the landfill, and created a place that lends books in a library within his house. He is a board member on the Association of Recycling Pickers of Jardim Gramacho. He has been working at Jardim Gramacho since he was nine years old. Suelem started working on the landfill when she was just seven years old; now she’s 18 and has two kids with another one on the way. She is very proud of the work she does because she realizes there is a lot worse things that she could be doing. Her passion is to take care of children, not even just her own.

The New York Times says that  “Waste Land” is more interested in the subjects of Mr. Muniz’s pieces than in the artistic process, which is barely described. They include Irma, who stirs up stews from the freshest ingredients she can find in the dump, and Suelem, an 18-year-old mother who takes pride in her work because she is not selling her body or dealing drugs. The Los Angeles times stated  "That a beautiful film could be set in the world's largest garbage dump sounds like an oxymoron, but acclaimed documentarian Lucy Walker has pulled off precisely that feat in her profoundly moving "Waste Land." She follows renowned Brooklyn-based, Brazilian-born artist Vik Muniz on a singularly ambitious project: going to Jardim Gramacho, a vast landfill established in 1970 north of Rio de Janeiro, photographing its catadores, pickers of recyclable materials, and then collaborating with them in transforming these photos into portraits created with recyclable materials. His purpose is to inspire his pickers to see themselves in a new way and even to re-imagine their lives" This film has won many different awards. One of the most important awards was at At the sundance film festival, where it won Audience Award for Best World Cinema Documentary in 2010.