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In these photographs Jack Lueders-Booth introduces us to a world made of garbage. Were we residents of that world we would walk, sit, sleep, work, and play on garbage. Garbage would clothe us, feed us, and cover our bones when we die. If we lived on the dump and had no knowledge of the world outside, the endless procession of overflowing vehicles discharging their bounty in our midst might seem miraculous, manna, a gift from God. As it is, both they as the inhabitants of this world and we as viewers are aware that the first noteworthy element here is also the most ordinary: what a large city discards can sustain a small one. Not ordinary at all is the resilience, the capacity for hope, the sheer will to survive of the community we are introduced to through the pictures in this book. We cannot help but admire them and be humbled by the evidence of joy and beauty in lives whose material circumstances are inconceivably poorer than our own. We are grateful they opened their arms and their homes to a photographer from far away, and grateful the photographer had the talent and the heart to make the most of their gift. Is this as far as the book will take us? We empathize with the struggles so compellingly set forth in these pages; we celebrate the persistence of humane values in a setting seemingly hostile to them; we marvel at the individual and collective victories over appalling conditions. So far, so good. But why are there people living on the dump at all? Why do they have to subsist on our leavings? Why do we leave so much? What’s the connection? This is not the place for an economics lesson, which I am not competent to deliver anyway. Neither the photographs nor their maker would be well served by a political screed, even though there is more than enough evidence here to arouse indignation. It is a testament to the fullness of Jack’s portrayal of this society that the “larger questions” don’t arise immediately; we are immersed in a world both familiar and strange. The familiarity is in part illusory, a consequence of the fact that the people in the photographs do things most people do every day. We know that something in this situation is not right; we know what it is. But the faces, the gestures, command our full attention. More than one viewing is necessary to understand that the photographer is not where we expect him to be: out here with us looking in. He’s in there with them, looking out at us. In the instant we realize that the scrutiny goes both ways, there is a possibility for a fundamental change in our understanding. The foundations of our own world may no longer seem so solid, our habits of consumption so innocent, our gestures toward responsibility so praiseworthy. Untying the dauntingly complex knots that connect our way of life inextricably with the families who live on the Tijuana dump is the work of more than one lifetime. No Alexander will sever its intricately mingled cords and save us the trouble. The families we meet here will continue to mourn more of their children than we in the First World do, eat the leftovers from our tables, clothe themselves and their offspring in our discards, construct their dwellings from shipping pallets, cardboard, auto parts, and demolition debris, until we change the way we ourselves live. |