This Mr. Woo from THE FAMILIES OF THE DUMP, photographic/donation project. I learned from his wife in 2022 that he had passed away. He always seemed such a fragile man, very thin with sensitive watery eyes.
This picture was made very early one morning in 2018. I arrived via my motorcycle at around 5am. He was alone in the garbage dump. He had slept in a small filthy tent like building made from found dump materials. There were many flies. Mr. Woo had just woken, he was thinking and smoking. We knew each other way back to 2013, he worked hard but his marriage was failing. He now stayed alone on the garbage, almost forgotten.
In 2022 I found out he was dead. I asked what had happened? I was told he drank too much, thought too much and his body was not strong enough to keep going.
If you want to hear his voice I attached a video. It was made a day or two after this picture. On that morning his daughter was visiting I asked him in Burmese what his daughters name was. He lit up a.bit at the question. Her father is gone but the daughter, Woo-Wee-Kai, continues to live in the garbage with her brother and mother. I will give them some portraits of their dad/husband next trip.
