Mário Macilau, 'Breaking News' from The Profit Corner series, 2015
"Mário Macilau captures details of life, instead, at the social margins, working alongside young men who glean materials on the electronics dumps in Maputo in Mozambique. While Macilau is at pains to give his subjects agency in constructing these images, the reality of their lives and the implication of how they derive a living is harsh. Great ashy clouds hang in the background from burning plastics and electronic waste.
In a few photographs we see computer circuit boards being melted down in little frying pans to extract their metals. This is where our European electronic consumer goods end up – we should not fool ourselves that what little recycling happens in the disposal of our stuff is a clean or safe process, for those who carry it out or for their surrounding environment."
