The SKURREL
2013
This body of work is portrait collaboration with individuals who make a living from the informal economy of skurreling. Skurreling (also known as reclaiming, urban-mining, trolley-pushing, waste-picking, recycling, scavenging and grab-grab) is the act of collecting, transporting, sorting and re-selling any available material worthy of recycling. Although this unofficial job title is something outside of the formal sector, it is a significant feature of the recycling industry, which would not function in the same way without it. Skurrelers collect and pack their trolleys with loads of up to 120kg and push them to buy-back depots for distances that can exceed 30km in a singe day. Each day’s pay is dependant on the type and amount of material that is collected - an average day’s pay after a haul is between R150 and R250.
Owing to the poverty-stricken living conditions that most of the participants survive in they are more often than not regarded as a nuisance or simply go unnoticed in the general public’s eye. Many of these individuals are migrant workers that have come to the city in search of work, often from places as far away as Lesotho and Zimbabwe. When no work is available they are left no choice but to turn trash into treasure. The work that they are doing is invaluable to the recycling chain as they collect recyclables from residential and business premisses which simplifies the municipal waste collection services job, as well as generates an otherwise unobtainable income for the individuals. The use of the white backdrop as part of the visual language is a device that is utilised in order to produce formal portraits of those who are participating in a distinctly informal activity. Furthermore, it serves to isolate the subject from the background but does not remove them from their context, which is in the street and on the skurrel. These images were made in Johannesburg and Cape Town, South Africa.
Since the production of this project a coordination of the industry in Johannesburg has taken place, with waste-pickers organising themselves under the banner of the African Reclaimers Organisation
Further images included in a self-published book titled The Skurrel.
The SKURREL
2013
This body of work is portrait collaboration with individuals who make a living from the informal economy of skurreling. Skurreling (also known as reclaiming, urban-mining, trolley-pushing, waste-picking, recycling, scavenging and grab-grab) is the act of collecting, transporting, sorting and re-selling any available material worthy of recycling. Although this unofficial job title is something outside of the formal sector, it is a significant feature of the recycling industry, which would not function in the same way without it. Skurrelers collect and pack their trolleys with loads of up to 120kg and push them to buy-back depots for distances that can exceed 30km in a singe day. Each day’s pay is dependant on the type and amount of material that is collected - an average day’s pay after a haul is between R150 and R250.
Owing to the poverty-stricken living conditions that most of the participants survive in they are more often than not regarded as a nuisance or simply go unnoticed in the general public’s eye. Many of these individuals are migrant workers that have come to the city in search of work, often from places as far away as Lesotho and Zimbabwe. When no work is available they are left no choice but to turn trash into treasure. The work that they are doing is invaluable to the recycling chain as they collect recyclables from residential and business premisses which simplifies the municipal waste collection services job, as well as generates an otherwise unobtainable income for the individuals. The use of the white backdrop as part of the visual language is a device that is utilised in order to produce formal portraits of those who are participating in a distinctly informal activity. Furthermore, it serves to isolate the subject from the background but does not remove them from their context, which is in the street and on the skurrel. These images were made in Johannesburg and Cape Town, South Africa.
Since the production of this project a coordination of the industry in Johannesburg has taken place, with waste-pickers organising themselves under the banner of the African Reclaimers Organisation
Further images included in a self-published book titled The Skurrel.