Yesterday as I walked the streets of Venice with thousands of tourists I kept thinking back to the lives of the people back in the dump. What would the bride and groom think of what I saw yesterday? Rich fat tourists shopping Guchi, Rolex, Prada etc. Pretty young Japanese girls dressed in the latest fashions complete with high heels looking for designer sunglasses in high end shops. Meanwhile the Chemenko the little boy of the bride is shitting in the dirt in front of his small lean-to garbage dump home.
In the dump naked babies sleep with flies and cockroaches next to garbage and here in Venice people pay 2800 Euros for a simple jacket with a fur lined collar or 10000 Euros for a watch. That’s pretty fucked up! At the dump I give people a $3.80 CAD headlamp so they can work digging through garbage at night and they are so happy. Here you need to buy grossly overpriced designer goods to find happiness. I will be seeing lots more of this later this trip, especially on my last day in Italy when I visit the fashion central city of Milan.
This travel experience photography has brought me into two very very different worlds, sometimes it is hard to deal with these conflicting experiences side by side.
