From THE FAMILIES OF THE DUMP, Mae Sot Thailand.
Dump Stories.
. It was 2018. I was staying in Thailand for 6 months, renting a room in nearby Mae Sot town. I would drive out on my rented motorbike every night to the dump, hand out donated goods, things like boots, headlamps, food and toys. Every night there would also be a hand out of mama noodles and lollipops for the children. After the donation stuff I would hang around for 5 or 6 hours making pictures. This went on 5 or so nights a week for 4 months.
That night as many families were working the freshly dropped garbage I tried to photograph some of their huts in the darkness. It was extremely dark and I could only see as far as my headlamp and my hand help headlamp would travel. The camera was on a tripod and I took long exposures of several minutes as I painted light onto the scene from the lamps. The huts were very basic, lean two in design and open to the smells, flies, rats and cockroaches of the dump. Feral dump dogs wandered at random, barking, growling and fighting with each other in the dark night. They occasionally bit people as well.
I was photographing one hut for maybe 30 minutes when I heard a noise, it sounded like crying but it would come and go. I was not sure where the noise was coming from as there were several huts in the area. In the isolated darkness of the garbage, it was an eerie and oh so sad sound.
I continued to photograph and heard the crying noise a second and then a third time. With difficulty I climbed up the hill of garbage, my rubber boots slipping at times, sinking into the softer garbage and mud. When I got closer to the sound I shone my head lamp on the hut I had been photographing earlier. To my surprise I saw a young girl, 3 or 4 alone. I was shocked to see her. It was completely black, then my light hit her and she suddenly popped out of the darkness. I could see her face, her tears. She did not react or even acknowledge that I was there. The girl just stared ahead while softly crying. It was heartbreaking. Her parents and her slightly older siblings had gone off to work the garbage and left her, the youngest, alone.
I made her picture, and stayed with her until a young family member returned, an older sister.
I had trouble sleeping that night, sometimes even now all these years later I can hear the sound of the child's cries in my mind and see her face appear out of the black. During my 10 years photographing the families I do not think there was anything quite as sad as seeing that child crying alone in the darkness of the dump.
